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-31.97303889

Longitude

115.7702194

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This layer contains historical information about Aboriginal people that may be distressing. It contains names of people who have passed away.

"I was born in the bush off Alfred Road and what they call Narla Road now. It’s where the Swanbourne Primary School is now built. It was Crown land in that part of the country. We just camped all through it, and it’s been a camping ground for thousands of years, you know of Aboriginal people there." Corrie Bodney, oral history, 18 January 2007. "Our camp was made of scrubs and sticks and bits of tin we picked up off the land and there, old hessian bags and so on. Just a pair of old sticks put up and just sort of made us some sort of framework to put the other piece across in the forks. And just put the boughs across and made some kind of little bit of roof… So it was pretty rough, no beds, we slept on the sandy ground. We had some old blankets and stuff to keep us warm. You used to get some government blankets and rations I think from the Native Welfare Department. The tip used to be like a shopping centre where we’d go to get a lot of stuff…We had open fires for cooking. Mum used to make us dampers and stews. We used to come to Claremont to the fish and chip shop and buy all the fish bones and fish heads and soap." (Corrie Bodney, oral history,18th January 2007, cited in Cook, 2016).

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