An Australian Reverand has shared the deep emotions he felt after walking in the footsteps of Stolen Generation victims, shedding light on the tragic history of Sydney‘s Central Station.
Standing on Platform 1 at Central Station, Reverend Bill Crews stopped by a memorial plaque honoring the thousands of Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families and sent across the country as part of the Stolen Generation.
‘This is a dark part of Australia’s history that most people want to forget. I’m on Central Railway Station in Sydney. Trains come here from all over Australia,’ Reverend Crews said in a video posted to social media.
‘Little Aboriginal kids were taken from their mums and dads, trained here to the number one platform at Central railway where they were split up.
‘The boys went to Kinchela Boys Home and the girls went to Cootamundra Girls Home (Cootamundra Domestic Training Home).’
Revered Crews choked back tears as he told Daily Mail Australia he was given a first-hand account of what it was like from a member of the Stolen Generation.
‘A lady from the bush rang me before Christmas and said she’d come see me and I saw her on Saturday morning,’ he said.
‘I met her there Central and she was one of the Cootamundra girls and she told me the story.
‘To actually walk in the steps of where the kids were walking was actually quite moving.’
The memorial plaque is next to Platform 1, near the Taxi rank, but people often walk by without noticing it because it ‘just looks like an advertisement’, according to Reverend Crews.
That was another reason he made the video and he wanted to send a message to modern day Australia.
‘Racism has no bounds. It has no morals and it is essentially evil,’ he said.
‘This platform would’ve been filled with crying children being removed from one another and taken to kids’ homes where incredible abuse occurred.
‘Many of these kids didn’t live. They didn’t die as children, they died because of the abuse that happened and they couldn’t survive into adulthood. This is just so wrong.’
Transport has worked with NSW Stolen Generations survivor organisations to install memorial plaques at its stations.
Plaques have been installed at stations in Grafton, Kempsey, Bourke, Berry, and Bomaderry.
Stephen Ritchie, from Taree on the Mid-North Coast, was taken from his family and sent to the Kinchela Boys Home.
When they were unveiled in 2022, he said he had mixed views about the plaques.
‘I might think different to the others but, to me, it brings back too many memories and you’ve got to re-live them again, which in my view is wrong,’ he said.
THE STOLEN GENERATION
Thousands of children were forcibly removed by governments, churches and welfare bodies to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families, nationally and internationally. They are known as the Stolen Generations.
The exact number of children who were removed may never be known but there are very few families who have been left unaffected — in some families children from three or more generations were taken. The removal of children broke important cultural, spiritual and family ties and has left a lasting and intergenerational impact on the lives and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Affecting anywhere from 1 in 10 to 1 in 3 children, there is not a single Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community who has not been forever changed.
The first Sorry Day was held on May 26, 1998, remembering and commemorating the mistreatment of the country’s Aboriginal people.
