Rabbit-Proof Fence

"Those other kids that were taken, they were much younger.
They didnít know mother. But I was older. I knew mother.
I wanted to go home to mother".

Molly Craig (84yrs), Jigalong, August 2000

Synopsis:

PERTH, AUSTRALIA, 1931: MR. NEVILLE, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, gives a lecture to a luncheon meeting of the Perth Women's Service Guild. He describes with pride the program, which he has overseen for the last ten years, in which part-Aboriginal children are removed from their families and taken to settlements where they are, "prepared for their new life in white society," through training as domestic servants and farm labourers. He believes that the Aboriginal race is dying out and that aboriginality should be bred out. He has power over every Aborigine in the state. He is in fact the legal guardian of the aboriginal children and has ruled that aboriginal children not be allowed to marry full-blooded Aborigines.

Meanwhile, in the small depot of Jigalong, on the very edge of the Gibson Desert, three spirited, Aboriginal girls live with their mothers. Running through Jigalong and out into the desert, as far as the eye can see, is the rabbit-proof fence. The fence was built fifteen years earlier and runs the whole length of Western Australia from north to south in order to keep rabbits on one side and pasture land on the other. The three girls are MOLLY (14) a sensitive teenager on the verge of womanhood, her cousin GRACIE (10) and her sister, DAISY (8). Mr. Neville gets word that the three girls are running wild and authorizes their removal to the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, as soon as possible. CONSTABLE RIGGS drives out to Jigalong and despite the fierce protestations of MAUDE, Molly's mother, FRINDA, her grandmother, and Gracieís mother LILY, is able to tear the girls from the women and packs them into his large black police car. Molly, Gracie and Daisy are taken 1500 miles away from home by road, rail and boat across the continent and down to the Moore River Native Settlement.

Moore River is a grim, un-cared for place, where the children are housed in large dormitories with few amenities, fed dismal food and policed by DAVID MOODOO, a skilled black tracker who is kept on hand in order to bring back any runaways. After only one day Molly finds the opportunity to run away. As a storm begins to roll in she grabs Gracie and Daisy and tells them that are going home.

This is a true story. Molly married and had two children. When her children were aged (4) and (2) they were all captured and taken back to Moore River. Molly walked back to Jigalong again, carrying Annabelle, the baby, and leaving Doris, the eldest behind. When Annabelle was three she was taken from Molly, never to be seen by her again. Doris was reunited with her mother thirty years later. She wrote her mother's story from which this film is adapted. Molly (84) and Daisy (78) are still living in Jigalong today. Australian Aboriginal children continued to be removed under government policy until 1972. Those children who were taken in this way are now referred to as the 'Stolen Generation.'

From Christopher Doyle (Director of Photography)

Home alone ?

After 12 years in the U.S. and U.K. making Hollywood blockbusters, Australian director Phillip Noyce has returned home to shoot Rabbit-Proof Fence, a film about the so-called "Stolen Generation ". The term refers to Australia's indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their Aboriginal families under a strict government policy that lasted almost 70 years.

Noyce : "This is a marvelous adventure story and thriller, celebrating courage and the resilience of the human spirit . It tells the story of three unlikely heroines who refuse to let an uncaring bureaucracy destroy their lives and must trek across thousands of miles of the most exotic and forbidding countryside in the world.".

Phil has been a friend for years .This is our first working collaboration . After more than 30 feature films this is my first Australian film

{NOTE : The words in italics attributed to various other participants in the film come either from conversations either myself or other collaborators had with them Not more or less than what it is}

This is NOT a story about the story. It's not my angle on what happened. That you will have to find yourself by addressing the issues and the realities and the emotions of the film for yourself. Everyone should read the books and see the film and then look into their own hearts and their own culture and experience to find what this film can be for you

These are just the notes of someone who has a privileged position on a film and this is my response to that privilege. On a film I am also the closest person to an actor or event. I am the eye that shares and can't turn away. My camera didn't and it was often painful even though " it's just a fiIm . Our job was to be as true as possible to what the story tells.

Sometimes I am the hand that leads and the light to follow. That's how it usually works . On this film the children lead our way . What follows is my response to the process of turning ideas into images and emotions into indelible moments. This book is about the frailty of a process that helps us see the strengths and weaknesses in us all.

These words are my response to the day to day, the inevitable, the moving and the sometimes profound experience of the making of this poignant, polemical film .

What's this film for me?

The question of what is family ? ( that I have neglected for so long ) A place / whose place? I was born in the same country . But the place I grew up in is not at all the place in the story . I have no experience anywhere near the one we will recount .

Courage and decisiveness . In spite of hardship no despair Reconciliation ( with oneself , ones history , ones body , ones journey , ones culture ..even the parts that are strange or unfamiliar to you )

Sharing . We have to be black before we can be black and white ( and then add yellow )The search for Self and respect.

What's this film for me ( too )?

1) A kind of homecoming (as it feels to a lot of us).Closure (this has been my most Australian year in more than thirty: I left when I was 18 feeling there wasn't much for me here, that there was more "out there" where I wanted to go). There is more out there, and more here now, I'm told. I come back looking for why and what I left.

2) An 'honourable" film. But not in the ' Politically Correct " sense for me: I know little of Aboriginal people's loss of honor or even the history of White Australia for that matter. I certainly don't feel any more or less guilty about this historical aberration than I do about all the others I have witnessed in China or Israel or in the many other Journeys of my own life. But we have to address things. Dare I say must use Art in the service of ideas? The access of change in the name of change? A good heart in the interest of love?

3) A confrontation of ideals and realities: In India I was even an accomplice of sorts to a similarly high minded and flawed experiment (more later). What as right and wrong in our intentions and a culture's conceits? (Don't see all that much difference between Neville and Americans in Asia or China in Tibet.) Can one be a good person in the servicof bad ideas? What was acceptable now will be different tomorrow. Isn't that what art and thought try to teach us? How do we live such ideals today and everyday?

Rhythm

What is the rhythm of a film like this? How big is the landscape? It is so long and low .It's so vast and wide how can we fit it all in the screen ? With wide angles / IN Cinemascope ? Close and low angle and intimidating? Figures in a landscape but distant; a small child's clarity of view? Or fluid and coherent and making all the plot points clear? (Don't think I'm had much practice at that one). As rough as the terrain, I am hoping. As close and yet as contradictory as true and magnetic north.

Well known Aboriginal actress Rachel Mazza was approached to act as " Coach to the film's inexperienced black stars. Rachel :" It's an amazing, powerful story that's going to resonate with all indigenous Australians as well as non-indigenous Australians. It's a really powerful story of survival. You know, taking away all the cultural stuff and all the fact that it's an Aboriginal Australia story, it could be a story that anyone from any country relates to and that's where the story's really powerful. But particularly because of the political climate in Australia at the moment with what we saw with that Corroboree 2000, with what we saw with Cathy Freeman lighting the Olympic torch. What we're seeing is an Australia that's ready to start looking at it's history. You know, we've got a lot more to go otherwise we wouldn't have John Howard in "

Nigali Lawford's theatre and screen credits read like an Indigenous Achievement Award . A meticulous craftsperson by habit . In agreeing to play Molly's mother Maude she had to look behind a mirror or two . Ningali : I didn't have to go far to research much that's n this film . I mean my grandmother had this happen to her so she was my whole material. After my father got taken away, my grandmother, even though I had a really good relationship with my grandfather her trust of him went straight out the window and she never went back to him after she lost the children.

There were four of them. Three of them got taken to Perth and one got taken to Moolabulla. So she never went back and she always blamed him that he didn't do enough but his hands were tied also. So it wasn't as if my grandfather, who was white, abandoned my father and his siblings, or my grandmother. It was the fact that the system in those days was like that. And she's never forgiven him for that. He left the Kimberleys and actually died somewhere down south. He was up there for a very long time. Finally went away and. yeah. There's four in my dad's family and the only one who saw my grandfather was the eldest one and he's got a bloody whole tribe now. there's millions of us. So my research was really from my own back yard. I didn't have to go far at all, just knowing that it did happen.

Pre- Prepared

I am in and on and under and all about this thing. It is my first day on my first Australian film. You can't get much more Australian right now than what we're attempting. A film that tried to address ignorance and the real . A culture and world view clash that my 30 years away from here is a drop in the ocean of . I can only hope I am more aware of the sea than the water and that the salt gets in my wounds not in my eyes .

Don't fence me in

The distances of the desert.The distance from where I now call home The distance between the two cultures. The distance I sense even better now from this unfamiliar land .

How to shoot all these flies ?

I can't name anything the way they can. It is too unfamiliar . So unknown . Many on the crew even some white folks act like Moodoo ( David Gulpillil ) tracking down the familiar , reading the land . But I don't really see much at all . What others call beautiful, just seems so uneventful to me . Where others find calm I find emptiness . I can't say what those hills say or the clouds promise . I guess I am going to be on high alert to make this film my own . I don't want to make a lot of wind and needless colours in this one light sand. I will have to look harder than I would on an Asian film .I must try harder to make this place my own. I don't want this film to be a stranger to me or the people I am trying to be with and make a gift for and about.

Structure

The film's look and temper is building itself out of the two main locations . Jigalong , where the kids come from is flat desert dry. But it should feel idyllic , The rabbit proof fence has to run nearby . It should feel like a place to want to go home to . You'd think there'd be thousands of Jigalongs in this vast land . Not so . Tribal rules and location logistics are making our Jigalong something we have yet to find .

Moore River is where they are taken to ( be "civilized ") is well documented historically and in the hearts and minds of many real people who were incarcerated there . We can't fool the with this one . Here too we have looked far and wide , all over the country , to no avail . We might have to build this one . The rest is filling itself in quite readily, or so it seems.

The film is a journey out of the colour and love of family and community into the darkness of the Mission. Then through the blindness of the journey to come out again in the light at the end which is home.

Jigalong is a scrubby lightly-hilled area and Moore River is hard and institutional. Harsh in the day and unlit at night. Our film has to take the kids and the audience through the visual experience and physical hardship of walking for 6 months from A to B Our journey has to pass through scrub and marginal farmland until they discover the fence. Then the landscape and the colours and tone should get progressively flatter. The sand Flats that will kill or redeem them are even starker than what has come till then.

This we will contrast to the world of White bureaucracy .Most of the story of Mr Neville's scheme and his hunt for the girls takes place in his Perth office . The wooden files and panelling . The high ceilings . His suits etc all suggest a stuffier , more formal composition . A more congested look . I choose a saturated Kodak stock as opposed to the " thinner "

Fuji range of the desert sequences . We frame more precisely and introduce more " attitude " into the composition . The camera rarely moves .

This is the theory that we talk through. It's only in the doing of it that what we can do will make the screen.


A film of "colour" ?

Everyone talks about the light and the colours of Australia in general and the outback in particular. I can't paint like an indigenous artist . Film doesn't have the same palette . Only personal experience can inform the colours and textures of this film .

I have to move away from Western/ Goethe colour thought .

Anti -or not Storaro ?

I don't want beautiful picture postcard images. I want almost no blue just variations of red. The colour of the desert coming and going like their day and night, like hope and courage. God ! I am starting to sound like Storraro

Roger Ford is a Brit and one of the most respected Production Designers in Australia . We chat in his office on the Fox Studios lot .

How has the Australian landscape influenced your production design for this film ?

Colours, basically. I've let the colours of the landscape trickle through the colours that we're putting into the film so that the people and the events are sort of grounded in the landscape. So we use the landscape as a sort of colour palette, if you like

How does one recreate the film's 1930 's environment today?

Well there aren't any real challenges except to get it right; to do your research; to translate that research into working drawings, like an architect would do; to hand it over to a good bunch of "Chippies " ( carpenters ) and painters and construction managers and away you go. Basically that's what you do. The key to it is the research in the first place, which is the case with every film.

And the costumes ?

What it enables you to do is to really control the colours of the film: the buildings and the colours of all the fabrics and everything, you pull it all together and you know that when Mr. Neville walks into his office, the two things. what he's wearing and what he surrounds himself with all comes together nicely. Well, it does normally on a film because the costume designer talks to the production designer but it's great to have the opportunity to do both together. I sometimes do that on films. .

Lonely at night ?

The sky is a better roof than a building. Like many indigenous people Molly often sleeps in open ground . In the story she finds solace in the sky's stories and direction in the stars .

You can't light the desert

You can't light the desert in the daytime ( as if you ever need to ) and you certainly can't light it naturally at night .

We don't have the means and I don't have the inclination to light up the night sky. How could it possible look natural when all they had was small fires and the moon in their night?

I decide to do as much DAY FOR NIGHT as possible or let the fire illuminate so little you can barely see.

Where we're at ( Flinders Ranges South Australia . First week of august , 2000 ) If we were ethnologists and academics we should have shot the fence as it is where it is and started at the same time as the girls did chronologically and meticulously followed every step of the way from SSE to due South and then a little West until they found the fence .

Unfortunately nothing much changes kilometre by kilometre in that part of the world, and the fence is a little ragged from disrepute and the passing of time

We need a compromise that is more logistically ok. It turned out to be the Flinders Ranges: a different landscape around every corner, and a progression of physical and visual possibilities one or two hours drive away from a pretty good hotel .

Film is about visual ideas and stimuli: you only see black if you have white, you only experience deprivation when you have had too much.

Population control

Much of the Journey part of the film is being shot on the property of Ross and Jane Farker . We travel for whole days in one direction and we're still not quite sure if and where it all ends. " Your land must be as big as most countries " I guess " Belgium starts south of the tree over there, and Holland . " he waves his hand vaguely to the North. "Hong Kong is not much bigger than your grazing lands" "But we're 'bout 5 million 999 thousand 998 people short " he winks: " it's just me and the missus for as far as you see and more . and the occasional very lost traveler or two "

Global positioning attitude

Every other day there's a discussion about how they travel through the landscape and how represent this in the frame.

Phil " On Dead Calm we worked out that left to right equals leaving home and right to left equals going home. " Scientific basis? " the AD suggests " Lets just call it a good idea " Phil can't help but reply.

So that's what we do .they travel left to right until they get to Moore River and then right to left all the way home .

Full circle route

Four wheel driving through a landscape of shrub and rock. We stop at the homestead of local Aboriginal leaders Tommy and Ivy . The visit is our White fella's gesture of respect . What we really need for the film is their approval for us to shoot some scenes close to local sacred ground .

It's another vast property the size of most countries .They warm to the story and tell one of their own. > " Never walked as far as Mollie and Daisy .." xxx confides as his wife concurs . " Born down there .." she points at a shed . " And ended up here " he laughs ,

The house is high up .It overlooks a history and a life

" Worked the homestead for generations . Paid in flower and sugar in those days . "

Them is those days .

Who would've thought that the law came on our side . The Master's house is ours now .." The place is ours now as historically ."

To which Phil jokes : " We got a lot of filmmaking Whitefellas . Maybe they could work the place for beers instead of sugar and maybe hamburgers is the flower of these days ."

Whose land is it anyway ?

Australia became a British colony and source of so much riches fro the " Mother Country " because the first Whites to arrive in Australia claimed to all obvious evidence that the land was legally " Terra Nulla " ( uninhabited land ) Which meant they could take it all and do anything they liked with it ... which is exactly what they did.

The legal and emotional and economic and personal repercussions of this history are part of why Rabbit Proof Fence exists at all and most of the resonance it has at this point in the history of Australia ( and similar countries ) . Who's land is it now ? All ours part yours ? Or should we just kick you out now ? If the land is Black because it is " Sacred " are we exploiting you as you did us when we exploit it for minerals and tourism and other riches ? If your people are as exploitative as our why should we give back all we have invested so much in ?

Rachel :

Basically, this story's a black story and Phillip's a white fella and there's a certain protocol which, much to his credit, he's made sure, you know, he's asked the right people 'how do we do this', 'how do I go about doing this properly?'

The Jigalong mob . It's their language that's going to be used in these scenes, but it's not the language from this story . you've got to ask permission of the people in Jigalong, you've got to ask permission from the Ngyngalese mob from Fitzroy crossing and you also got to ask permission from this mob here on this land that we're on now, whether we can speak this language on this land, let alone shoot. That's different again, you've got to ask them that too.

Old Man

We do warm up and other exercises with the kids .Bonding ? I'm not sure since they call me LuLu ..which means something between uncle and old man . Everlyn can't contain herself over an image going round of me and a tall Chinese girl : " She your wife ? How long ? How old is she ?. the questions are as intense as my unease . " How come I always seeing Chinese girls like older men ??? "

HOW COME ??????

Rachel ( Mazza ) is acting coach for the three lead girls who are eight, ten and 12

Working with them as much as she could in a very condensed way in the two week rehearsal period . Normally that would be a reasonable amount of prep , But the girls have never acted before and because they're the age they are..

Rachel :" Just introducing them to the world of film and what they will have to endure has occupied most of my time ."

The girls are on 10 hours a day ( with schooling and such as well ) They're in every scene practically, so it's a hard call.

Rachel : "On set I chat with them over breakfast and we talk about what's coming up and we run any lines that we need to. It's a lot of discussion about what this moment in the film is about, feeling the inner world of the scene, what's just happened, giving them a sense of time. All the work an actor would normally do on their own, I'm helping them out with.

They have been unbelievable, incredible, what their stamina, their concentration, their patience and the result of all that is what's coming across on screen. They're just stunning, absolutely amazing and it hasn't been easy. Man, the amount of wind we've had to put up with, and blistering sun the next day, and hail and rain and running through freezing, ice-cold creeks. It's been full on ."

Braids

Time for hair to work for the film . The way the girls look don't work for the film so .. Phil ; Who's going to be first Tianna : I will Phil : You like to have you hair cut ? T : No . But gotta do it cause it's a movie and we have to look that way

Day one Sept 18 , 2000 Kangaroo Creek : the Chase

Tracker Moodoo (David Gulpillil ) and his horse are sizing each other and the terrain up but its not a sunny day and the water is clean and cold. The kids have wet suits and special footwear .Our safety officer is trying to pick rocks out and a relatively mild current for them to run through to hide their tracks from Moodoo.

Phil checks we have all got all the procedures right, then turns to the kids to see if they know not to panic if something unexpected happens

" If you fall in the water who will be the first person in there to get to you? " Tianna brightly blurts out: " That safety man " then adds "cause he wants me to do another take . Laura : " .and so do you ! "

The weather

To shoot in cloud or sun is always the question in this changeable climate 5 minutes of cloud vs 3 minutes of sun and then what looks like a minute of cloud turning into no sun all afternoon. So what do you do? Make the scene sunny or cloudy or both? It takes time to make it all consistent. The weather determines the style, look and schedule of the film as much as we do. We don't wait for what we expect. We take what we find.

Rule number one

Phil is hyping our first time actors up reminding them that it is a film. Phil: " What I the first rule of film-making? " Tianna brightens up in spite of the cold: " Don't look at the camera unless you tell us to " Phil : ' What is rule number two ? Tianna ; " Don't look at you even when you yell at us "

Action directors

Kids love to go tactile with the process of filmmaking. They play with my meters and try to figure out our other tools of the trade. They scramble for the clapper board to announce the scene and take number, " Action " then " Turnover " and once they have done what that take required of them they are the first to cry " Print it " And off they run.

The characters so far

Film acting is more about casting than theatre acting. Find a person with the role's energy or Qi or character and movements 80% right and that person IS the part they are playing. Tiana / Daisy is: the I'll do anything for you one Laura / Gracie is: A " Why not toe the line, it's there for a reason " type And Eveylin /Molly believes "Stubborn is right " Are our girls keeping more and more in character, or are we just getting to know them better?

Rabbit-Proof Fence: Bulletin #2

With the first week behind us, everyone involved with the project is in good spirits about the remaining 7 weeks of the shoot. During the last week of preparation all feared the worst; that our 3 untried actresses would not be able to make the leap to big screen acting. Though faith in the steadiness of Laura Monaghan (Gracie) never faultered, the last minute re-casting of Tiana Sainsbury in the character of Daisy (formerly to be played by Caitlin Lawford), and the difficulty adjusting to the discipline of film-making experienced by our lead Everlyn Sampi (Molly), left many questions hanging in the air on the first day of the shoot.

However, what was revealed to the film makers as they watched the week's footage was that the new group dynamic was perfect for the needs of the film. Tiana Sainsbury provides sweetness and light with her doe eyes and innocent demeanor. Laura Monaghan is the strong and steady core of the group, playing the more rational Gracie, and as expected, Everlyn Sampi is the powerful and charismatic star of the show, bringing to life Molly's determination in the face of her own doubts. These girls would appear to have no trouble competing with the more established and experienced names.

David Gulpilil added an unexpected regalness to the character of Moodoo, making the tracker who pursues the girls even more of a formidable adversary than originally conceived.

Note : These Bulletins were produced at the end of each week of the shoot by Lucia Noyce , Phil's daughter and production assistant on the film

Moore River

We wanted to find a location around Adelaide . Some kind of institutional facility we could easily convert . We looked and looked and didn't find . So about 5 weeks short of shooting we realised we'd have to build the whole thing from scratch ourselves .

Almost as soon as we started the work it started to rain. 2 weeks after we started it was a quagmire ; the trucks couldn't get in from the gate; the men couldn't work and we thought we had a looming disaster. But the weather fined up, the men worked incredibly hard and it took shape very quickly after that.

Question to ( Production Designer ) Roger Ford

There is a certain barrenness here . Is that the point ?

Yes . The historical Moore River was actually a sandy soil and all the vegetation around the houses was worn away . So we brought in weeks of truckloads of sand ( very ecologically ) roughed up the vegetation as much as one can .

It's not supposed to be beautiful. We went to Moore River and, I don't know what it was, whether it was just a sense of having read all the books and stories and research about it, but it felt to me, it had an atmosphere about it, Moore River, that was quite oppressive and there's a sadness about it somehow and I think other people felt it as well. I guess the spirit of the place is still hanging around of all the things that have happened there in the past. This, of course, is only a set really and doesn't have any of that stuff going on but I should think to walk into it from having been a child there would be quite dramatic and quite disturbing, I would think.>

So the set here is quite an accurate representation of the original?

It's uncannily accurate actually. Without any false modesty, if you check out a photograph and take a photograph of this and put the two together, it's like. (gestures). It's something to do with the slope and the location. we were just very lucky to find this place.

The Law

As far as I can understand the aboriginal concept of the law is " who we are " and " we are also the law " It seems a very Asian concepts to me . If the Aboriginal people carry the law in their hearts and live they must breathe it , eat it , live it as an enlightened Yogi or Buddhist does : This is not a tree , this is a manifestation of Qi is something that seems to be echoed in the Aboriginal idea that : this is not a rock : this is my grandfather " This is a place where the dreaming is realised sounds awfully like the dreaming is a form of Qi .

The dreaming

I am still not clear ( and don't intend to be more that an observer of and ) about the real meaning of the Dreaming . but if the Aboriginal people are descended from the beings of the Dreaming and if these being represent their attachment to their heritage and the unity Aboriginal people share with all things . I do hope that part of our reconciliation is the realisation of this common bond of souls a realised in other religions concepts of Reincarntation and Karma and Qi .. and I certainly hope it doesn't include the totally irreconcileable concept the Christ is our saviour who died for our sins . You mean the sins of mineral exploitation don't you and the sins of xxxxxxxxxxx

Phil's Law

Phil arrives every morning with a shot list for AD Emma Phil : " 27 setups .. it doesn't say where the camera goes . It's just what we have to accomplish in a day to keep the story going " Emma : " How and why 27 ?" Phil : " Through experience and mistakes . Emma : " Whose ? " >Phil : " If a team can't get at least that much done in a day we might as well go home ." Emma : " But the weather is as unpredictable as what we can get from the kids ." Phil ( smiles ) : "Actually we only need to get a good 14 shots a day . Once they're in the can I try for 6 more to make those 14 better .. Emma : " That's only 20 . You're still seven short ! " Phil : " Seven or one or ten more doesn't matter . Once we got beyond our original 14 anything extra is a bonus !!! Emma ( is still sceptical ) : " SO it works this way all the time ? Phil ( reflective ) : " Well , on night shoots the 14 drops to something like 9 shots . Otherwise it seems to really work quite well

Stolen

Rachel : This scene is the worst, the one that you're seeing behind us, this is the scene where they take them away. You've got Constable Riggs sitting around the corner spying on them. It hasn't happened yet but he's going to drive around the corner and do the big grab with the mums screaming after the car as it races off. I reckon it's going to be hard for a lot of this mob. There's a whole big busload of people that have come down from Alice, and a lot from Fitzroy crossing. It's going to resonate for all of them what happens in this scene coming up. I'm not looking forward to it.

Ningali

Maude ( myself ) and Lily chase after the car and try and get the girls out. Mr Hungerford has always been saying they were getting letters and letters and we were saying 'oh yeah, it'll never happen, you're all blah, blah, blah,' . But we know there's always the possibility of children of mixed races, being one white and one Aboriginal being taken away.

So we heard stories so we know it'll happen, but when it'll happen, we don't know. It was a sudden thing. Recreating this whole thing makes me realise what my grandmother went through. When my father got taken away they knew they had white kids, or half-white kids on the station and the station manager was actually my grandfather, so they knew but didn't tell them, he knew when they were coming and he kept saying 'oh, no, no, I've got no kids here' but in the end they turned up without his knowledge. That was always the case the majority of the time, they weren't told they were coming. Then they just came upon them and took them away.

So yeah, this next scene is a real killer for me, it's a real sad one. Even Rachael (Maza) and I were talking about it and every time we try to explain the importance of this bit to the girls we always get teary, me and her.

End

Where we are

This is a true story. Molly (85) as I write and Daisy (79) are still living in Jigalong today. Molly passed her story on orally to her daughter and her daughter's daughter has passed it on to the world . What the represents continued after Molly and daisy made it home : Molly married and had two children. When her children were aged 4 and two they were all captured and taken back to Moore River. Molly walked back to Jigalong again, carrying Annabelle, the baby, and leaving Doris, the eldest behind. When Annabelle was three she was taken from Molly, never to be seen by her again. Thirty years later , after a lifetime of the domestic work and such Neville and most Whites perceived as their proper lot Doris was reunited with her mother . She wrote her mother's story from which this film is adapted. Australian Aboriginal children continued to be removed under overnment policy until 1972. Those children who were taken in this way are now referred to as the 'Stolen Generation.'

Release: 3rd April, 2003

Category: I

Cinema:
AMC / Cine-art/ Broadway-Cinematheque /UA Timesquare/ UA Shatin

Website: www.rabbitprooffence.com.au