Edited transcript of the interview with Dr. Sue Lopez Atkinson.
I’m sue Lopez Atkinson. I’m a proud Yorta Yorta woman and I’ve lived in Moreland for over 50 years. Starting off in Coburg as a child [and] moving out when I got married when I was very young and then returning to Brunswick about 33 years ago.
My grandfather was a painter and decorator. At the side of the house in Phillips Street there was a gate and it said ‘S. Halls Painter and Decorator,’ so that stood proud there until probably the 70s.
He [was involved in starting the] free lending library at the Mechanics Institute. I think it was about 1927, it was him his brother and a small group of other men who set that up and I believe that evolved into being the Brunswick library as it is now.
When I went to primary school it was the very different environment. The teachers were quite harsh and there was still a lot of corporal punishment used on the boys and girls. And there was a lot of bullying in the playground so if you were different in any way you are Mediterranean in appearance if you’re an Asian child if you were Catholic if you had a disability if you were overweight. Sometimes the older boys, I witnessed quite a few assaults on children who were different. So I think that made me think about what I’d like to do when I was older.
I went back to work when my son was six months old because my then husband had a serious accident on the motorbike so he wasn’t able to work. So I got some part-time work in a local preschool. But the real turning point for me career-wise culturally wise emotionally was when I was invited to teach on the aboriginal childcare course in Collingwood. So that’s when I think I really found my place and the education world and in my own cultural world as well. Teaching Indigenous students from all over Australia about childcare. Some of them were 16 at the time we also had women who might have been perhaps in their 50s, so that was lovely because some of the older women could mentor some of the teenagers, some of whom were quite shy. I learnt a lot from the students I think if they probably taught me more than I taught them. I did my PhD, it must be almost 10 years ago now I think since I’ve finished. So I interviewed about 40 people 30 of them being local indigenous people, including the elders of course, parents practitioners and a handful of children. One of the children I spoke to was two and probably three-quarters and he knew the colours of the Aboriginal flag and what each colour represented. So a lot of our children are really excited about their culture and listening to it two-year-old talk with such passion about the flag was really wonderful to hear and how informed he was about it as such a small child.
Image credit: Jessica Ferrari/Memento Media
About the ReCollection project.
As part of the 2017 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Memento Media partnered with Moreland City Council to present ReCollection at the Coburg Carnivale. ReCollection is about celebrating, sharing and capturing the memories of Moreland’s places, history and faces. The ReCollection exhibit showcased short documentaries and printed historical material which helped attendees take a trip down memory lane.
During the Carnivale, many locals generously shared their stories about life in Moreland in our specially built ReCollection Recorder.