During the second half of 1946, groups and individuals walked off stations and other workplaces to join the strike camps. Caroline Jula, who had worked as a domestic servant at Warrawagine station, joined the strike camp at Moolyella in late 1946.

The Western Australian Department of Native Affairs tried repeatedly and persistently to end the strike and return workers to stations. The strikers held out, however, using successful non-violent strategies to maintain their stand.

Caroline Jula, Striking from Warrawagine Station
Transcript

We bin stop there, and we heard about that strike coming. Hello, old Dooley, he bin coming there.

‘After, you fellas got to strike’.

We strike then, we going to Moolyella. And we bin stop there, right up to Saturday.

We bin tell’m [the station manager] ‘No, we want to go, we gotta follow Don’.

‘We gotta give you little bit tucker, for road’.

‘Na, we got enough, kangaroo, meat’.

Start rolling up swag, that morning, Saturday, we off, and walk, Moolyella. We went walk, right up, have a dinner in the windmill, Three Mile Windmill.

Oh, we gotta billy cans and blankets and all that. Sambo, and wife from Sambo, you know?

Everyone! Everyone. We leave’m Warrawagine, only we leave’m four old people in Warrawagine. We went there, we make a camp in a middle, in a windmill. Boys get a kangaroo, maybe emu, and might be goanna. We finish’m all one day for supper or dinner, we bin finish’m off, oh big mob. We went to Moolyella, strike. One day, when we bin sleep in the middle, in the road, we went, sleep there, morning we went in the road. We have’m dinner there, in the middle, Moolyella. Next morning all the big mob, big mob from Warrawagine. We went there, we see big mob here, all strike. We bin stop there, Moolyella, we bin yandy’m tin, you know, little bit, for tucker, we get tucker little bit, tea and sugar.

Then we bin stop there. They bin make a tucker, get a little bit money, you know?

Citation

Audio: Caroline Jula, tape 1, recorded by Anne Scrimgeour, Woodstock Station, 13 August 1991.
Photo: Caroline Jula, Board of Anthropological Research, South Australian Museum, AA346/4/22/1 Marble Bar R361.

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