The girls had to head east to find it, then follow it north to reach their native land. Jigalong was located along this “rabbit-proof” fence. A fence built in the early 1900s to protect farmland from rabbits ran the length of the continent it was by some accounts the longest unbroken fence in the world. Pretending they were going to the edge of the camp to empty their slop buckets, they fled when no one was looking. Anyone who tried to run away was beaten and isolated.Īfter one night Molly persuaded the other two girls to escape with her. The other two were Molly’s 10-year-old sister Daisy and 9-year-old cousin Gracie.Īt the camp there were bars on the windows, padlocks on the doors and buckets for toilets. One of the girls was her mother, Molly, then 14. “She helped Australians understand and come to terms with our previously hidden history,” Noyce, born and raised in Australia, said in an interview last week.įor Pilkington Garimara, the story began in 1931, when government agents seized three half-aboriginal girls from their home in the tiny town of Jigalong and sent them to the Moore River Settlement 1,000 miles away. “Her impact on Australians’ sense of themselves can’t be overstated,” said director Phillip Noyce, whose highly praised 2002 film based on the book bolstered the campaign that brought a formal apology from the Australian government in 2008.
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