Children on a hill looking to Roelands Mission

There is not one single story to be told from Roelands, but many. Roelands Native Mission had fifteen cottages in which children lived with their ‘house parents’. Some children had good experiences, while others had terrible experiences and suffered abuse which led to ongoing trauma. All the children worked hard, either in the home or doing farm chores. The girls were expected to work at cleaning, washing, and at kitchen chores, and the boys had the daily chore of chopping and carting wood for the heating, cooking and hot water in the houses. They also tended to the crops; older boys herded and milked the cows.This photo shows the grapefruit and orange orchard, on the bend of the Collie River. All the children picked the fruit, and then worked in the packing shed grading, wrapping and packing the grapefruit into the wooden boxes that they had made. Once the boxes were packed, they were taken by truck to Fremantle to be exported to international markets.