Photo: Local Literacy For Life Foundation staff Gail Turnbull, Rose Jones, Mark Jones and Debbie Welsh around the ‘Tin Town’ site.
Team members at the Literacy for Life Foundation are on the lookout for former ‘Tin Town’ residents to map the island’s history.
Adult literacy Coordinator, Sonja Sands, is piecing together audio interviews, photos and news clippings for stories about the site.
She grew up in there a dwelling made with tin sheets, located at the junction between the Castlereagh River and Warrena Creek, until her family left in the late 1970s.
“We want the good, the bad and the ugly stories,” Sonja said.
“We’ve have been given a few names of people around town and we will be going to have a yarn to them.
“We’ve been told that an local Aboriginal man has some photos and has some stories. He’s also done a painting of the island, so I’m looking forward to catching up with him.”
“We want names of different families that lived there.”
Sonja said she plans to make a booklet containing stories and photos from the island.
Students in the current Literacy for Life cohort will transcribe stories as part of their course work.
Aboriginal people were camped on the area from at least the 1940s, according to researcher Philip Felton, who died in 2013.
They lived in structures made from flattened kerosene tins, tin sheets and bush timber. The homes were vulnerable to flooding.
Former inhabitants and their descendants said there were water wells while Sonja said at least one dwelling had electricity when she lived there.
Indigenous people faced discrimination that prevented them from living within the town until efforts in the 1960s to secure three houses for Aboriginal families finally forced a heated public meeting where a majority voted to overturn the policies.
But the focus now is on gathering the history of the place.
“We’ll be building on this project every year.” Sonja’s colleague Gail Turnbull said.
“It’s never going to be over. This is not a ‘start to finish’ project. It’s ongoing.
“We’re putting it out there to spark some interest from the community about their history, their family history, and hopefully, it could be a part of our Everyday Literacy campaign in the future too.”