Sarah Breaden: “A Refined and Splendid Kind of Girl”

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Central Australia throughout the early 20th century, many Aboriginal women gave birth to babies who had been fathered by white men. Between 1914 and 1929, these children were removed from their families and taken to live in the burgeoning town of Alice Springs, in a collection of tin sheds referred to as “the Bungalow”. Such removal of children from their families was in line with assimilation policies being enacted across the colonised world. During my research into the Bungalow, I came across a file in the National Archives entitled “Sarah Breaden (Half Caste) Education”. Sarah was born of an Aboriginal mother and white father, on a cattle station in Central Australia, in 1907. In some ways, her story, which I went on to explore, reflects that of so many children of dual Indigenous/white heritage born in that time and place. But in other ways, Sarah's circumstances and experiences differ markedly. A key aim of my project has been to research and write a creative history of the first Bungalow in Alice Springs 1914–1929, and the context in which it was situated. This article is adapted from a chapter of that literary work.