The Queensland government's own official records from the early years of the Barambah settlement did not refer to the people living there as residents or community members. They called them inmates. In one report, the Chief Protector of Aboriginals noted that the behaviour of the inmates had been excellent, and that no trouble had been experienced in managing them, although they included several ex-prisoners and incorrigible girls.

Inmates. Incorrigible girls. In a settlement that would grow to house more than nine hundred people from twenty eight different language groups, most of them forcibly removed from their own Country under Queensland law.

This episode tells the story of Cherbourg, the Queensland settlement established in 1901 on Wakka Wakka Country near Murgon, originally known as Barambah. It is the story of the same Queensland legislation that produced Palm Island, applied in the south east of the state rather than the north. The same Aboriginals Protection Act. The same government superintendent controlling who could leave, who could marry, whose mail could be read, whose wages went into a government trust account instead of their hands. The same dormitory system that separated children from parents across multiple generations.

We talk about what it actually meant to be forcibly relocated to a place you had never been, from Country your family had managed for tens of thousands of years, alongside twenty seven other language groups who had also never asked to be there. We talk about the brass band, the boxing club, the football team, the quiet acts of resistance that kept Cherbourg's community alive inside a system designed to contain it. And we talk about what the trauma carried out of those eighty five years looks like in the present day, and why the story of Cherbourg did not end in 1986 when the government finally handed the land title back.

This podcast is recorded on Wadjuk Nyoongar Country. We acknowledge the Wadjuk Nyoongar people as the Traditional Custodians of the land this show is made on, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

This is a 3 Brothers Production.