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.  

Uranquinty Migrant Women's Memorial

Uranquinty is a very small town just outside Wagga Wagga in rural NSW. In World War 2 the town housed a training camp for Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilots. In the post-war years, that same camp was used to house refugee and migrant women and children, who were often left behind while men went to work on ‘nation building’ projects such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme. A small rest spot opposite the Uranquinty Hotel incorporates commemoration of both these histories, as well as a small cenotaph for the region’s war dead.
The rest stop includes a toilet block and bbq area, where travellers regularly pull in to use the facilities or to visit the pub and shops across the road. The path leads from the picnic tables to a section explaining the area’s connection to the training of pilots where two flagpoles either side of a plaque commemorate those pilots who lots their lives.
Past this, surrounded by a small native garden, is a cast iron sculpture commemorating the experience of those who stayed at the Uranquinty Migrant Hostel. The sculpture depicts a woman holding a baby, and with a small girl hiding behind her skirt. Next to them is a box suitcase that clearly dates the woman into the middle of the twentieth century.
The sculpture is by local artist Canny Kinloch, and a plaque reads:

KAIA
COMMEMORATING URANQUINTY
MIGRANTS CENTRE COMMUNITY
1948-1952 

The sculpture was dedicated during a reunion event named 'Uranquinty Remembers' during Easter 2001 hosted by the Uranquinty Progress Association to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Hostel.
Three signs behind tell the story, and two trees are 'sponsored' in green metal cases.
Near the memorial is a red brick path, with names engraved on many of the pavers, presumably people who spent time in the camp.
Most of those who stop to use the area don't look at the memorials or read the signs - their reason for being there is to rest and refresh themselves for the next part of their journey. But I like that this history of the migrant centre is incorporated into the other stories of the area.