Case 442

Clip 2: Broken heart, unsound mind

Taken from the documentary Case 442 (2005)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be G

Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

In reconstruction, in an overgrown field, an Aboriginal woman staggers through the lofty vegetation before falling to the ground. Frank, in voice-over narration, tells us that his mother’s heart and spirit were broken, and her life shattered because he was taken from her. Frank explains that Maudie was taken to Claremont (now Graylands Hospital), a hospital for the mentally ill that categorised Maudie as a ‘Female native suffering from unsound mind’. Evelyn Grove, a Graylands Hospital nurse recalls meeting Maudie, saying that she was rather withdrawn and believes she would have had a breakdown after losing her son. Black-and-white footage of the Claremont taken in the present day is followed by external shots of Claremont, colour, present day.

Curator’s notes

In the Bringing Them Home Report about the Stolen Generations, the testimonies of the children are recorded. What is generally missing from these stories is the mother’s perspective. The emotional turmoil endured by Maudie from having her son removed, and the incarceration that resulted, gives human value to what may otherwise be only statistical evidence.

Romaine Moreton, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows, through interviews and reconstructions, the consequences for Maudie Yooringun of the removal of her son in the 1940s. A re-enactment of a distraught Maudie Yooringun is shown alone in the bush, and black-and-white footage is used to show Claremont Hospital for the Insane, where she was incarcerated. A medical report states that Yooringun was ‘suffering from an unsound mind’. Her son, Frank Byrne, says her heart and spirit were broken when he was removed and Evelyn Grove, a former nurse at the hospital, remembers her when she was a patient there.

Educational value points

After the removal of her only child, Maudie Yooringun was sent to Claremont Hospital for the Insane in Fremantle, where she remained until her death 18 years later, even though former nurse Evelyn Grove says she did not appear to have a mental illness. The Claremont site, which housed up to 1,000 patients, operated between 1904 and 1983, a time when the mentally ill were institutionalised.

While Yooringun’s breakdown was a reaction to the removal of her only child, she was nevertheless perceived as having an ‘unsound mind’. The Protector of Aborigines in 1906 said that ‘I would not hesitate … to separate any half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic her momentary grief might be … They soon forget their offspring’ (http://www.austlii.edu.au).

Light-skinned or mixed-race children such as Byrne were targeted because it was felt they could be more easily integrated. Frank Byrne’s removal from his mother was part of the policy of assimilation adopted by the Western Australian Government in the 1930s, which assumed that Indigenous Australians would be best served by integrating them into non-Indigenous society. This was to be achieved by instructing Indigenous children in a Western way of life.

The clip re-creates Yooringun’s story through interviews with her son Frank Byrne and nurse Evelyn Grove, a dramatic reconstruction of her breakdown, black-and-white footage of Claremont Hospital and the medical report stating she was of ‘unsound mind’. The combination of images and words conveys a sense of how Byrne has had to reconstruct his mother’s story through medical records, the recollections of people who knew her and speculation.

Much of the scene depicting Maudie Yooringun’s breakdown is filmed from her point of view as she wanders aimlessly and collapses in long grass, creating an impression of disorientation, while the soundtrack of stark music mirrors her despair and Byrne’s voice-over explains that her spirit and heart were broken.

A dreamlike sense of disconnection is achieved in the depiction of Yooringun’s arrival at Claremont Hospital by replacing all ambient noise with a monotonal soundtrack, filming in black-and-white to suggest a previous era and using point-of-view hand-held camerawork to replicate Yooringun’s perspective. Later, hollow footsteps and the sounds of children playing are incorporated to evoke the ghosts of the past.