On missions at their best

At the best, they’ve given them a place, a safe place, taught them to be part of the white man’s world. Otherwise they would have been just, you know, sent out there or destroyed or other things, so there was a lot of good things that came out of the Christian missions. Even though there was a lot of paternalistic stuff happening, at least a lot of people felt safe. We wish it hadn’t gone that way but, you know, the government were already pushing people away, like here in Victoria, a lot of tribes here were just pushed away to Healesville and it was the Christians that really cared about them and stayed with them. And people don’t realise that it came at a cost for a lot of these Christian missionaries as well, they were ostracised from their settlements, you know?

I think of John Green that happened here, John and Mary Green that helped people here in Victoria. There was a lot of things that happened where they – people didn’t want anything to do with them, you know, their fellow white people didn’t want anything to do with them because they were looking after the Aboriginal people.