Jack Moffatt Quilpie

Uncle Jack Moffat describes how he found out where we was from, some 30 years after he was taken from Quilpie and put in the dormitory in Cherbourg.

Transcript

Jack Moffatt – Quilpie

Jack Moffatt :

When we came here they brought my mother from Quilpie.  And I was 1 year old when I was at Quilpie.  I never knew anything about it because my mother never told me nothin’ about it, how she came here and put her in the dorm baby quarters, that was the next one over and that’s where she lived and I lived there with her because we were allowed to stay there ’til we was 5.

When I asked my mother she said “oh don’t ask too many questions.” Because she was worried about her other family.  She wondered where they got to.

And then I was married then – when this man came up to me, we was crossing paths, and that’s when he said to me, “Why don’t you go back to Quilpie and have a look and see if you can find your people?”  and I stopped and I looked and I said “what do you mean?”  And he said, “you don’t come from here!”  And that’s the first time I ever knew it.

And I said “you sure you’re talking to the right person?” “yeah” he said.  “If you want proof, you go out, and I’ll tell you this.  They picked you up from my sister’s step.  She only had one step into her house.  They picked you up there and your mother was following you.  And the police pulled up there with a truck and told your mother to pack up her stuff.  She never had much stuff, she put it in a flour bag.  “Righto,” they said, “pick up your son there. You’re going to Cherbourg.”

But since that man told me about that, I went out to Quilpie, to see if everything that man told me was true.  And I went to this Mrs McCullop (?) I think her name was… and I knocked on her door and she said “who you?” and I said “my name’s Jack Moffatt?”  and she said “who?”  and I said “Jack Moffatt” and she sort of stepped back, and she said “you Ethel Moffatt’s son?” and I said “that’s right”.  “the one with the crooked arm?”  My mother had an arm like that (gesturing) and I said “yeah that’s right”. And she said “they picked you up from this very place, spot here.”  And I said, gee, that’s proof.   “They picked you up from here.”

“Boy,” she said, “I don’t like to tell you too much, because you know… I don’t know where your people ended up.”  So I never bother to look for my people because none of them ever came to see my mother.  I was so upset, cut about it you know.  Because if she had three sisters and 5 brothers, surely they would come and see where she ended up y’know?  And I was bitter from that time on, more or less.

Recorded at the Boys’ Dormitory in Cherbourg, 2008