Case 442: Broken heart, unsound mind

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.

Case 442 synopsis

Frank Byrne was stolen from his mother Maudie Yooringun at the age of five. Decades later, Frank searches for his mother’s burial site with the intention of taking her back to her country in the Kimberley, 42 years after she passed away.

Case 442 curator's notes

A personable and intimate portrayal of an Indigenous family whose lives are irreparably changed by the government removal policies. Case 442 is the story of Frank Byrne who was taken from Christmas Creek to Moola Bulla on the 20 November 1943, removed from his mother Maudie Yooringun. Frank pinpoints that moment of his life – when he was taken to Moola Bulla – as being when the struggle for survival began, not only for him but also for the other children removed from their parents. When Frank was taken from Moola Bulla to Beagle Bay Mission, he was told by a priest that his mother had died, but the details of where, when and how were unknown to him, and Frank would search for the answers to these questions all of his life.

Case 442 is a heart wrenching story of Frank Byrne, who as an old man finally finds his mother’s resting place at Perth’s Claremont Mental Institute, where she was incarcerated following a nervous breakdown she suffered after the forced removal of her small son. Frank Byrne’s search for his mother was one that was supported by Stolen Generations senior case workers Justin Howard and Heather Shearer, and Julie Hayden from the Department of Indigenous Affairs, who collectively located Maudie’s remains. Case 442 is a personal testimonial to the effects of Aboriginal child removal policies, and the lifelong consequences it has had upon people who have endured being separated from their families and communities. Witnessing the emotion of Frank Byrnes, now an elder, and the determination he has to find the remains of his mother and return her to her country, is a demonstration of the impact of child removal policies on an individual survivor.

A film from writer and director Mitch Torres, Case 442 is the human face of a government policy designed to assimilate Indigenous peoples into mainstream society, the intention being to indoctrinate half-caste children with western values and in the process, forget Indigenous cultural identity and connections.

This program has also screened on NITV, National Indigenous Television.

Notes by Romaine Moreton

Education notes

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.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia