Bush Legends: How Roebourne’s Weerianna Hostel gave kids life hope through education

Whenever Allery Sandy drives past the now defunct Pilbara children’s hostel she never wanted to call home, she admits an emotion she never thought she would feel. “Every time we go past we say, ‘This is where we used to live’,” Ms Sandy nods with a warmth that belies her initial indifference over being sent as a pre-teen to Roebourne’s Weerianna Hostel. And it shines a light on a historically-positive entity in a town that has had more than its share of negative publicity in recent years in regards to family violence, anti-social behaviour due to drug and alcohol abuse and family violence. It had hit a flashpoint in 1983 with the death in police custody of local 16-year-old John Pat after an altercation outside the town’s Victoria Hotel. The incident helped trigger the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and now the annual “Songs For Peace” songwriting sessions and concert alongside the John Pat Peace Place are held in to honour the teenager’s memory. Ms Sandy, now 66 and a Yindjibarndi elder, was just 12 when she was sent to Weerianna Hostel with her older sister Aileen as their elderly grandparents were struggling to walk them to school from their reserve home. Their father Sandy Andrews, a renowned cattle musterer and horse-breaker, and mother Lilla Sandy were both working more than 100km away out at Mount Florence Station. So the only realistic option for the sisters was Weerianna, a State Government-run hostel established in 1964 for Aboriginal children going to primary and high school in Roebourne and being run by missionary couple David and Margaret Stevens. But Ms Sandy was still dreaming of her tableland county. “I didn’t want to go to school and I didn’t want to stay at the hostel,” she said bluntly in recollection. “I wanted to go back to the station because there was freedom where you could run and be on country. But my parents said I needed to go to school and learn.” Ms Sandy now lives at the Mingullatharndo Community, about eight kilometres south-east of the Roebourne townsite, and is one of the brilliantly-talented artists at the local Yinjaa-Barni Art centre. Reflecting on her Weerianna experience, she is now convinced her life skills would be lacking had she not been forced to go to the hostel.. “It was about encouraging each other and just being there for each other,” she said. “It helped me with my education and with my respect and taught you to be strong about yourself, to be bold and contented and happy with what you’ve got.” The Weerianna Hostel was an emergency accommodation housing facility for children aged 15 and under from 1955 before the Stevens’ took over almost a decade later and ran it for 11 years. State Government records reveal that there were 66 children in residence at the hostel in 1971, dropping to 45 by 1979. By 1995, it had turned back to emergency accommodation and while the hostel buildings were mostly demolished in 2013, the former girls’ dormitory remains on the site at the town’s western entry. Mr Stevens said he had been told by local elder Coppin Dale, who gave the hostel its name, that Weerianna was a type of straight tree used for making spears. He fondly remembered his time at the hostel, particularly because of the educational opportunities it enabled for its residents. They also made sure the students used holiday time to reconnect with their “old people”, to ensure their cultural values and knowledge remained strong. “It helped a lot of the kids to get a good education,”Mr Stevens said. “It didn’t get them all and some of them have even gone now. But there were quite a group who went on to high school when none of them had ever been to high school. Each year, there were more and more of them and quite a few went on to university as well.” Ms Sandy said the Stevens’ continued to be “great mentors” well after her time in the hostel had ended. The latter recently passed, but their Roebourne legacy continues through their daughter Ruth Ellis. Mrs Ellis said her parents were living in Bunbury, where her father was a mechanic, in the 1950s when they felt “a calling” in the north to embrace some form of work with children through their Pentecostal faith. But the destination was not an easy sell for Mrs Stevens. “The three things Mum didn’t like were heat, lots of men and cooking,” explained Mrs Ellis. “Then, there she was cooking for 12 men in the Pilbara.” The family moved to Roebourne in 1961 when Mrs Ellis was two and she said her mother told her that her bed was a beer crate. She remembered Roebourne as a town without power at the time, but one which offered robust lifestyle in the bush or on the nearby beach and a hostel that felt like home. “We had a big, old car in the yard and used to go in it and pretend we were driving, there was a trampoline, we had monkey bars and when it was hot we had these big, round containers and we’d just dunk in them,” she said through vivid memories. “We’d have big barbecues, there was a basketball court and we had movie nights. Dad would sometimes have to get rid of some boys who would come around at night and he’d yell, ‘Margaret, get the gun’ and they’d skidaddle. “But looking back on it on the whole, it was just a great time and I admire my parents for what they were asked to do because it would have been a hard slog.” Mrs Ellis’ paternal grandparents George and Rosa Stevens also ran missions at the remote Aboriginal community of Jigalong and in Marble Bar after heading to WA from their Melbourne home and her uncle and aunt and Stan and Marion Angel ran another in Onslow. She was convinced the hostel played a significant role in the vocational and social betterment of Roebourne’s residents. But it was not her family’s only influence as in 1969 they also started the Pilbara Aboriginal Church, which still has a committed community under the guidance of Pastor Marshall Smith - also a former Weerianna border. There was an obvious strength in connection built on many years when Mrs Ellis and Mrs Sandy joined Bush Legends on a sunny afternoon in Roebourne to explore their hostel memories. The latter unashamedly also claimed it was a staple of religious faith which had delivered her the purpose to succeed in life. Ms Sandy, whose art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in private and public collections including the Art Gallery of WA, was a sometimes church-goer in childhood, but committed to her faith in 1984 and remains a worship leader. “I just thought to myself, ‘There’s got to be something better in life than just playing cards, getting into mischief and drinking’,” she said. “If I was drinking, I was making my children suffer, so I had to stop and find something better in life.” The indigenous language teacher said her faith gave her great strength after the death of her first husband and father of her three children and then again when she also lost her second partner, who had for many years battled kidney failure related to earlier alcohol abuse. “I said to myself, ‘Everything is going away from me, but it’s ok, I’ll just keep pottering on and following the Lord’,” she said. “It’s a responsibility that God has given me and I’m happy and content. I feel strong about myself knowing that I’m not alone ... I would not be here in this world if it wasn’t for Him looking after me.” Ms Sandy sometimes wonders where her life would have led if she had been able to continue the station life she misses deeply. But the passing years and adversity have delivered her a grounded perspective. “Things are changing and we can’t prevent them from changing so we have to move on with them,” she said. “To me now, Roebourne is quiet and peaceful and I like it the way it is. I just wish the river was flowing with water so we could be swimming in it like we used to do in the early days when this park and this street were filled with people, our families. “I kind of miss all that.”