"Youngster" Memorial Plaque for Children in Immigration Detention

In May 2015, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Nick Galvin reported a mysterious plaque that had appeared on a Sydney wall. The plaque, on the corner of George and Barrack sts in Sydney's CBD, turns Caroline Rothwell's whimsical sculpture "Youngster" into a memorial for refugee children.
Drawing on language that Australians would have been very familiar with from the ANZAC centenary celebrations just a month before, the plaque begins, "Lest We forget Them."

It continues:

Children seeking asylum in Australia are kept in detention as part of a government policy which inflictc harm on refugees fleeing violence and persecution.
Their suffering is our shame.
Here at this site we remember them and together call out for change. 

The plaque is very small and barely noticeable, yet it is a strong call to all those who pass by the busy corner to call to mind children held in Australia's detention centre. It was installed in the wake of a damning report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, Forgotten Children, released at the end of 2014.  The report's title echoes the 2004 Forgotten Australians Report into the treatment of Australian children in state care.
The sculpture the plaque has attached itself to is a small bronze sculpture of a young person in a hoodie. It stands at about chest height for most adults: a very small person covered by too-big-for-it clothes. Artist Caroline Rothwell was quoted as saying she was honoured her sculpture was being used in this way.
"I agree with the sentiment. Also part of my idea with the work is that these little hooded figures we generally see as a threatening form are actually vulnerable."
The building on which the plaque was attached is owned by the City of Sydney and leased by luxury clothing brand Burberry. So far, the plaque has been allowed to remain.

Questions:

If you know of anyone who was involved in the creation of this plaque, I would love to hear from them. Email ali.phd.map@gmail.com

Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project (and planned memorial)

The Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project (PFFPMP) is an arts-based memory project based in an area of the Sydney suburb of Parramatta which has been used since early colonial days to house women and children in institutional settings. The project is driven by artist and memory activist Bonney Djuric, herself a former inmate at Parramatta and founder of the Parra Girls group.   

While there is as yet no formal memorial on site, Bonney and other artists have used art and community creative events to make the history of the site more visible. PFFPMP works out of a single room in the precinct grounds, but has managed to turn the two storey building into a gallery space, hosting exhibitions and allowing artists to interpret the now-empty spaces on the second floor.

"The Forgotten Ones" installation by Bonney Djuric

 

 As well as this, the site has been used for gathering of ex-inmates (known as Parragirls), a conference and various community days. There are plans underway to develop a children's garden, to transform a site that was once a place of pain into a place of joy.
PFFPMP is the only Australian site connected to the international Site of Conscience movement, which is aimed at using places where past human rights abuses have occurred to educate people for a better future. However, the future use of the site is still uncertain. The Female Factory Precinct is still being assessed for national heritage status.  As an outcome of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a consultation process has started to develop a government-funded memorial, although this project will not formally involved either Parra Girls or PFFPMP. Informal artistic responses to the history of the site are already in place.  

Australian Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial, Ballarat, Victoria

The Australian Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial is unusual in that it is located in the regional Victorian town of Ballarat, rather than in the national capital, Canberra. Part of the reason for that is the lack of recognition for many years of the role played by prisoners of war (POW) in Australia's war history. The memorial was built near the Ballarat Botanical Gardens and dedicated in 2004 after veterans became disillusioned when vague plans to build in Canberra came to nothing. In 2008, the memorial was recognised as officially ‘national’.

The POW memorial acknowledges both those who died and those who lived. The names of all known POWs are engraved on a wall of black granite, in alphabetical order grouped according to which conflict they were involved in. This is similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the US, although there the names are of those who died and are listed chronologically. When I visited in July 2015, many of the names were decorated by red poppies.

In a break about half way along the wall, seven obelisks stand in a shallow pool of water, with one laid on its side representing the fallen. This is not representative of the percentages of those who lived versus those who died, as up to a quarter of POWs did not return. The obelisks also list the names of places overseas where Australian armed forces have been held captive. 

Images: 12, 21, 33, 25?, 37, 40

Opposite the obelisks stands a single stone with the names and dates of each of the wars. This stone is surrounded by flagpoles. In between is a slab on which wreaths can be placed on special days engraved with the words "We will remember them."

At the end of the walkway, which is designed to reference the railway sleepers that were a horrific part of many WW2 POW's experience, is a wall of water. On top of this is engraved the words, "Lest we forget". It is the water from this wall that runs along the shallow stream past the names and around the obelisks.

The memorial was designed by Peter Blizzard and a black granite slab at the entrance is engraved with an explanation of the symbolism of the  various elements. It states:

"This memorial is dedicated to all Australians who became prisoners of war while fighting the enemy." 

The physical memorial is also connected to educational material, including a touch-screen console at the memorial site, and a website containing more information.

Colebrook Reconciliation Park, Eden Hills, South Australia

The suburb of Eden Hills, located on the edge of the Adelaide Hills, is now a busy urban area, with few remaining areas of natural bushland. However, in 1944, when the Colebrook Home for Aboriginal Children moved there from Quorn, one of the reasons this site was chosen was its remoteness from the city. This was as close to ‘civilisation’ as a home for Aboriginal children was to be allowed.
The bush block on which Colebrook was built is now mostly empty of buildings, and instead is covered in original and recovering bush vegetation, a 'dancing circle', a shed and toilet. The site of the old 'home' has been reclaimed as the Colebrook Reconciliation Park. This is probably the biggest and most significant Stolen Generations memorials in Australia - so this will be quite a long post as I try and do it justice.

The Reconciliation Park is located on Shepherd's Hill Road, next to the Karinya Rotary Reserve. For commuters driving through the surburb, its most visible part would be the mural painted by Kunyi McInerny in the mid 2000s. The mural tells the story of children from both the riverlands and the inland APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands, where Kunyi herself was from, being brought to Colebrook. It tells this story truthfully but also with a sense of hope. To the left it reads,

“We cannot forget the past, but we can come together and unite as one, in friendship and forgiveness, and honouring each others culture.”
Although she was not a resident of Colebrook herself, Kunyi had sisters in the home, and is a member of the Tji Tji Tjuta group, meaning "all the children". Along with this group of ex-residents, the other group involved with and responsible for the Reconciliation Park is the Blackwood Reconciliation Group, a grassroots community organisation that grew out of a study program in the early 1990s as part of the Australian Government’s decade-long focus on Reconciliation which was funded 1991-2001.

For visitors who leave the road and pull into the small carpark, the main memorial area is a peaceful park area where the natural bush has partly re-grown and a few more established trees provide shade. Pathways are punctuated by large boulders and two simple seats. Some of the larger boulders contain plaques with various dates, often around or just after 26 May, the date the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Parliament, which has come to be known as "Sorry Day" and marks the beginning of Reconciliation Week.
The first plaque is dated 1997 and was unveiled by former resident Prof Lowitja O'Donahue just days after the tabling of the Bringing Them Home Report. A community barbeque planned as a reunion events for a few hundred ex-residents and community members drew a crowd of around 2,000 over the course of the day, and a hastily passed around bucket became the start of the funding for the two formal memorials onsite, both created local artist Silvio Apponyi.

The "Fountain of Tears" was installed in 1998. Water bubbles out of the fountain onto an empty coolamon, a traditional bowl-like tool often used to carry babies. The water then runs down over faces carved into the granite surface of the memorial before collecting in a small pond at the bottom. The models for these faces were ex-residents of Colebrook, but as adults they also represent the faces of the people left behind in the communities from which children were taken.
In 1998, a bronze statue was installed. This sculpture is called the “Weeping Mother” and represents all the mothers of the children who were taken to Colebrook. Although the sculpture is of a woman staring down at her empty hands, she is rarely found without something in those hands, as
people bring flowers or beads as a mark of respect.
There are also a number of plaques on rocks around the pathways the crisscross the park. One of these plaques honours two women who were in charge of the Home in the early days, and also shows a composite image of some of the ex-residents as children. Writing in her autobiography, Kick the Tin, Doris Kartinyeri says they are “just like the pictures in my house" – photos of our brothers and sisters from the home.
An important part of the development of the Reconciliation Park has been reclaiming this space as a positive place for ex-residence and the community. Many residents of Colebrook suffered abuse and neglect, on top of the pain of being removed from their families and communities, and re-claiming the space has allowed them to return and to remember the bad but also the good times they shared growing up. A short way away from the memorial
space is a fire pit surrounded by rocks and wooden seats to form a story circle. The Blackwood Reconciliation Group still meets here in good weather, and students from Flinders University are regularly brought to hear the stories, passing on the history to another generation. In 2014, local high school students completed an art project to decorate the shed which can be used for shelter.
Colebrook is different from many other memorials sites, because it is not one single memorial, but a site layered with acts of remembrance from 1997 right up to the present. The reason for these memorials has changed over time. As the remaining original residents have aged and many have died, the focus has shifted from acknowledgement and mourning for residents to advocacy and education for future generations.

Forgotten Australians Memorial, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney

The Australian Federal Government provided $100,000 in funding for memorials to acknowledge the Forgotten Australians. Divided among the different states, this amounted to $16,666 each. The NSW State Government chose to place this plaque at the Twin Ponds site of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, turning the area into a quiet, reflective space where people can come to remember and acknowledge the experiences of people who spent their childhood in State care.
That is one interpretation. The other is that the memorial is hidden away, continuing a tradition of marginalising this aspect of Australia's history.
The memorial plaque reads:

For Forgotten Australians In this place, we remember the many thousands of NSW children who grew up in care in the decades leading up to the 1990s – in orphanages, in Children’s Homes and foster homes, in institutions. We remember the lonely, the frightened, the lost, the abused – those who never knew the joy of a loving family, who suffered too often at the hands of a system meant to provide for their safety and wellbeing. We rejoice in their courage and strength. This corner of the Gardens is dedicated to their memory.Erected by the Australian and NSW Governments19 September 2009