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CROKER ISLAND EXODUS
Year: 2012
Classification: G
Runtime: 61 min
Produced In: Australia
Directed By: Steve McGregor
Produced By: Danielle MacLean, Anna Grieve
Language: English
DVDs now available!
1942, CROKER ISLAND, ARAFURA SEA. As the Japanese bomb Australia's north, 95 Aboriginal children and their missionary carers set off on a remarkable journey to safety. Their trek takes them from Croker Island through Arnhem Land to a Methodist farm at Otford on the edge of Sydney. Over 44 days they travel 5,000 miles by foot, boat, canoe, truck and train. This compelling documentary film is their story, in their own words, a truly heroic and untold journey.
1941: all white women and children are evacuated from Darwin. Japanese invasion is imminent. On a tiny Methodist mission on Croker Island in the Arafura Sea, the Superintendent and three Cottage mothers are responsible for 95 Aboriginal children allocated to their care by the government.
The missionary women are given the option of evacuating but how can they abandon the children placed in their care? However food supplies are running dangerously low and no help comes through the long Wet season
In February 1942, a message comes by pedal radio: Darwin has been bombed, and the missionaries will now have to move the children off the island themselves.
So begins their perilous journey.
After borrowing some fuel they are finally able to secure the mission boat The Larrpan and sail to Barclay Point. They spend their first night on the mainland facing the threat of salt-water crocodiles. A young Margaret Somerville, one of the Cottage mothers, remembers in her letters home, "What a strange crowd we looked, lying down in all our clothes on a sandy strip of beach on the top of Australia! How quiet and lonely it seemed."
Their first destination is Oenpelli Mission. This requires a trek over many miles of open savannah and the harsh beautiful stone country of Arnhem Land. When the old truck becomes bogged, the children help push it to harder ground. They gather armfuls of water lily stalks and climb for berries in the bush plum trees.
Netta, one of the mission children, looks back more than 70 years later and laughs, "Somebody found a half dead goanna and we were fighting for that goanna, we want the tail, somebody wanted the leg, Alice wanted the head."
Margaret Somerville remembers, <i>"It was the resourcefulness of the children that kept us fed." (/i) At night they make camp, using their dwindling supply of flour and yeast to make damper. It will still be many miles walking. At Oenpelli they expect to stay 3 days but it is weeks before word that government trucks can't get through and they will have to walk another 60 miles to meet them. With help from the traditional Aboriginal men they cross the flooded East Alligator River by dug-out canoe. The river is home to saltwater crocodiles but despite falling into the river they make it across safely.
After many days, they meet up with the trucks. But arriving in Pine Creek they find an American army base, no beds - just the Butcher's Paddock on the outskirts of town. They are forced to stay in this one tree paddock until they can board a cattle train en route to Alice Springs and their destination, a Methodist Farm in Otford on the outskirts of Sydney. In 44 days these brave women and their young charges travel from Croker Island across the Australian continent.
This is a truly heroic and untold journey. But it is also an epic story of human endurance, strength and resilience.
After the war, Margaret returned to Croker Island with 69 children including Alice, Netta and Jessie. She stayed on the island until 1965 when she returned to Sydney to look after her parents. A year later there was a government decision to close the Mission and move all the remaining children to homes in the suburbs of Darwin and Adelaide.
Alice, Netta and Jessie are now in their 80s. They have endured so much in their lives but the friendships forged on Croker remain strong and feisty. These Aboriginal women still call Margaret, now 100 years old, 'sister'. It is their shared stories of love, humour and compassion that are central to this film.
VIEW TRAILER HERE: vimeo.com/1220707230
FINALIST! Foxtel Australian Documentary Prize, Sydney Film Festival, 2012.
Director STEVEN McGREGOR
Writers DANIELLE MacLEAN & STEVEN McGREGOR
Producers ANNA GRIEVE & DANIELLE MacLEAN
Editor BILL MURPHY ASE
Director of Photography ALLAN COLLINS ACS
Production Design & Wardrobe EMMA FLETCHER
Composer GEORGE PAPANICOLAOU
Featuring ALICE BRISTON, NETTA CAHILL, JESSIE LYONS, MARGARET SOMERVILLE
© 2012 Screen Australia, Tamarind Tree Pictures, Film Victoria, Australian Broadcasting Corporation