Sandra Hill, Elder and Custodian

The three most important structures in Sandra’s life are family, culture and country.

As an Elder and custodian of the Wadandi / Pibulmun country, in the South West of Western Australia, Sandra encourages cultural awareness, she has worked extensively with different shires and corporations in the south west; the Shire of Capel, the City of Busselton, The Shire of Augusta/Margaret River, the City of Bunbury, as well as, the Water Corporation, Synergy and the South West Police to name a few.

Sandra is a Board member of the Undalup Association a not-for-profit organisation that focuses of sharing culture and caring for country.

Sandra has also worked with the Bridgetown Historical Society, helping with the rejuvenation of the Bridgetown Police Station Museum. Sandra and the museum staff have made a space in which visitors can learn something of the history of the indigenous people together with the colonial history, these histories are now recorded side by side.

The traditional owners of the section of (Bibbulmun country), the South West of Western Australia which includes Geegeelup (Bridgetown), are the Pibulmun and Wadandi people, they have been the custodians of this area for over 65,000 years.

Bibbulmun is a word which has a meaning ‘land of plenty’ because the river feeds all of the country in the South West. Looking at a map of the southwest corner of Western Australia, it has the outline shape of a women’s breast.

Cultural Inclusion is also an important issue for Sandra, to that end dual names for certain areas are a welcomed change.

The Blackwood River that runs through Bridgetown is known as the ‘Goorbiliyup’, which means the lower intestine or stomach of Bibbulmun Country, as it feeds all of the country in the South west.

Sandra Hill is a Bibbulmun artist, she was born in South Perth in 1951. Her mother’s family are the Ballardong, Wilmen and Njunga people and her father’s are the Wadandi, Pibulmun and Minang people of Western Australia.

Sandra was also a part of the ‘stolen generation’. She was taken from her mother’s care in 1958 along with her two sisters and her brother. The family was living in Point Samson in the Pilbara region of northern Western Australia at the time of this forced removal.

“He came with a piece of paper in hand, and asked if they would like to go for a drive in his big car.” Sandra says.

Sandra and her three siblings clambered in, the image of their mother collapsing as they drove away was incongruous with their excitement.

“They took us to hospital, they chloroformed us and I have no idea to this day what they did that for.

“Then they took us to the Roebourne Police Station and the four of us kids slept in a locked cell. A few days later they flew us to Perth and we were taken to Sister Kate’s orphanage for half-caste kids.”

She describes Sister Kate’s as “a disgusting place”.

“The cottage mothers were cruel; they beat us and they tortured us emotionally,” she says.

This organisation helped place mixed race children into foster care, as was the practice of the day under the assimilation policy. Sandra and one of her sisters were fostered to a non-Aboriginal family with whom she remained until she was married in 1968.

Welfare workers told Sandra her mother had left her kids under a pile of tin in the bush. She hadn’t. They said her father was dead. He wasn’t.

But after a while, she began to believe the stories.

Sandra grew up in a white foster family, thinking her mother had abandoned them, she was deeply resentful of her.

She didn’t learn the truth until she was in her 30s. In the early 1980s Sandra Hill tried to find both her parents. She went to the Welfare Department and she sought out her mother’s Welfare documents. Twenty-seven years later the children had a chance encounter which led to the siblings finding and reuniting with their real mother and father.

Sandra’s latest project is a story telling installation which she has been working on for around the last seven months, it is a cultural display at the ‘Packing Shed’ in Balingup, just behind the café.

It is a space where she has been able to document her family’s story and the story of others who suffered a similar fate and the story of the Bibbulmun people of the South West who were displaced from their traditional land and campsites and forced to live in unsuitable camps on the outskirts of town.

It is a display which tells a story that as Australians we should all be well aware of, and by knowing the story we can gain an understanding of why some of the First Nations peoples in the south west are still so troubled. It is a display which should be visited and viewed with compassion.