{"id":51389,"date":"2013-11-22T00:04:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T14:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=51389"},"modified":"2020-12-11T10:42:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T00:42:04","slug":"piecing-together-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2013\/11\/22\/piecing-together-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Piecing Together The Past"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Edna Malone with a copy of the letter her mother wrote \u00a0back home to Cherbourg while working as a domestic servant in North Queensland; \u00a0Edna’s tea towel also includes a copy of the work contract her mother signed, which bound her to her employer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

November 22, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every Wednesday a group of women are meeting to sew, chat and pull together the threads of their family histories.<\/p>\n

The “Many Threads” group at Cherbourg began in May as just a friendly way for local women to get together and learn sewing skills but after attending a three-day workshop last month they are now working on a project which when finished will produce a powerful picture of the lives of their mothers and grandmothers.<\/p>\n

The women are sewing 24 tea towels that will be displayed side by side to trace the story of the “domestics”, the \u00a0young girls who were trained in domestic science at the former mission and then sent out to work on properties all over Queensland.<\/p>\n

These aren’t any old tea towels … they are scrapbooking on linen. Historic photographs and letters are being interspersed with colourful decorations to describe different aspects of the girls’ lives.<\/p>\n

“Everyone is taking a chapter of the story and illustrating it on a tea towel,” \u00a0historian Jo Besley said.<\/p>\n

Jo, who is a museum curator and arts development officer in Brisbane, \u00a0led the workshop which kick-started the project.<\/p>\n

She has been doing volunteer work at The Ration Shed Museum for more than a year.<\/p>\n

Grace Bond, from The Ration Shed, said the story of Cherbourg’s women was “from domestics to debutantes, to diplomas and degrees”, and this was what was being depicted on the tea towels.<\/p>\n

After being trained at the Domestic Science building at Cherbourg, girls as young as 12 were sent off to work.<\/p>\n

Some were treated well on the properties they were contracted to; many were not …<\/p>\n

Edna Malone’s tea towel reflects “How They Worked Them Real Hard” … the story of her mother Cynthia Williams who was sent at the age of 14 to a property near Richmond in north Queensland.<\/p>\n

Cynthia wrote a letter to her grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, at Cherbourg telling her how she worked from 5:00am to 10:00pm daily, with no time to even wash her clothes.<\/p>\n

She begs her grandmother to try to find out if she could be moved to another property. Her desperation is apparent as she finishes her letter “answer as soon as possible, straight away”.<\/p>\n

An exhibition of the finished tea towels is planned to be held at The Ration Shed on International Women\u2019s Day on March 5, 2014.<\/p>\n