Tragedy hits Sharyn hard Call for community to understand
WHEN Sharyn Douglas learned of the four children killed in a crash last Sunday her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
It was a needless waste of young life in her eyes.
“Tragic, absolutely tragic,” Mrs Douglas said of the crash.
“It broke my heart to see those four, I drove past and it was just so sad.”
A chunk of Mrs Douglas’s childhood was spent on her family’s cattle property on the outskirts of Jambin, a small rural community an hourand-a-half southwest of Rockhampton.
It was during her formative years Mrs Douglas grew fond of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“Mum and dad decided to have children out from the Parkhurst orphanage,” she said. “We were lucky, no blessed, to get two little Aboriginal girls.”
At the height of the Stolen Generations era, Mrs Douglas said her parents were happy to go against the grain.
“We went to Biloela to do our shopping and one of the girls held my dad’s hand and called him daddy. My dad was a gentleman and a gentle man, he saw the stares of people in the shops but he didn’t care.
“The farm had Aboriginal artefacts on it and my dad knew what each of the artefacts were. So it was thrilling to know we lived where Aboriginal people walked.
Mrs Douglas said even as a six-year-old she could sense something was off with young Aboriginal girls living away from home.
“My grandfather made me a bow and arrow and one of them broke it.
“I could see there was something wrong and she was reacting to something. Maybe she was reacting knowing she was going back to an orphanage.”
Mrs Douglas said she felt sick when she saw the racist outpour from some in the community in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter Rally and fatal crash.
“It doesn’t help, it’s like putting petrol on the fire. There’s already a fire burning.
“We need to go easy on the parents, we haven’t walked in their shoes. The parents need healing, their children are dead.
“Today I see so much turmoil and so much crime. I think the young ones are reacting to the stories from the past. “They’re reacting to generations of pain, they know they’re doing the wrong thing. If they get a reaction, they’re going to do it more.”
The 67-year-old said education and acknowledgment were the keys to healing and uniting Australia.
“At our school we learnt how to use Bunsen burners, algebra; we never use it.
“I’d like to see more teaching of their people and history in our schools. We need that history, it’s history of this country.
“It’s an every person thing. As a nation we have to own what they suffered and what they’ve gone through.”
WE NEED TO GO EASY ON THE PARENTS, WE HAVEN’T WALKED IN THEIR SHOES. THE PARENTS NEED HEALING, THEIR CHILDREN ARE DEAD SHARYN DOUGLAS