This picture book is based on the childhood of Doris Katinyeri, who was taken from her parents as a baby and put into the Colebrook Home in South Australia, where she stayed for the next fourteen years. Despite the traumatic background, this book is largely a cheerful description of the games the children in the Home used to play. They had no expensive toys, no television or computers. But they did have the bush setting, their imaginations, and each other. They played with tin cans, with knucklebones from the Sunday roast, with sticks and flowers, and in the woodpile. They gathered bush foods and made secret gardens.
The illustrations are mostly created with coloured pencils, giving a soft, textured look to the images. There is a very Australian palette of blue skies and the greens and browns of the bush, with pops of colour in the children’s clothes. Each illustration gives the impression of busy industry or movement, capturing the children absorbed in their play.
Doris Kartinyeri is a Ngarrindjeri woman from Raukkan, a community at Point McLeay in South Australia. Kunyi June-Anne McInerney was born at Todmorden Station in South Australia. Her family’s language group is Yunkunytjatjara. Both the author and the illustrator were removed from their families and sent to Colebrook Home as young children.
At the beginning of the book is a foreword – ‘About Colebrook Home’ which gives more of the history of the Home and the organisation that ran it, the United Aborigines’ Mission. At the end of the book is a description from the author about how to play ‘kick the tin’ and ‘knucklebones’. There is also a short biography of the author and the illustrator.
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
