Because of Her We Can

That's my great Nanna, Amy Ridgeway, holding onto me in the chair as I squint into the sun.  My Poppy, Les Ridgeway, is standing next to my mum, Cheryl, who is dressed in that lovely yellow 70's summer dress.  Everyone I've ever spoken to about Nanna Amy has said she was a beautiful person, loving, kind, and generous.  I remember Nanna Amy and the house she lived in.  Was it Newcastle?  I remember mum and Aunty Min caring for all us kids.  I remember having fun with Aunty Sandra's kids, mostly Brad and Michael because they were close to my age.  I remember eating ice blocks at Nanna Amy's house and watching TV.

Nanna Amy was born 110 years ago at Salt Ash near Port Stephens to Laura Maher, who would have been 19 years old at the time.  Laura worked as a housekeeper for an Englishman named Henry Waddingham who owned a shipping company based at Windi Woppa.  He never officially recognised the children he fathered with Laura, although my grandfather, Les Ridgeway, recalled visiting his biological grandfather when he was a young child.  I believe that Amy visited him from time to time, so there must have been a relationship of some sort between father and daughter.  Whatever the case, Waddingham's black family never received any of his wealth when he died.

According to Worimi tradition, our connection to clan and country is through the women in our family.  Laura and Amy were women of the Maiangal clan.  My grandfather's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Ridgeway, nee Russell, was born on Tobwabba clan country, where the Forster Private Hospital currently stands, just a few hundred metres down the hill from the traditional burial grounds at South St, Forster.  Elizabeth married John Henry Ridgeway who was the son of an Englishman named George Ridgeway and an aboriginal woman named Sarah Reed b.1813, who came from Walcha, which is near Tamworth.  We don't know much about Sarah, but we do know that she is the mother of what has become a very large Ridgeway family.

John and Elizabeth Ridgeway fought hard to keep their land at Forster, but were eventually removed from their property following a campaign by white neighbours who didn't want a black family in their town.  The Ridgeways ended up at Karuah Mission, which is where their son, my great grandfather, Arthur Ridgeway, met and married my great Nanna, Amy Maher.  As far as I can tell, Arthur and Amy were loved by everyone that knew them.

The theme for NAIDOC this year is "Because of Her We Can."  I like this theme because it has prompted me to think about and appreciate the lives and contributions of the women in my family and acknowledge that they have not only made my life possible, but have also enriched my life.

I can only imagine what life would have been like for Sarah Reed, a black woman, raising a family with a white man nearly two hundred years ago.  Elizabeth Russell and Laura Maher experienced dispossession and moved their families to the missions.  Amy Maher raised her young family during the Great Depression.  Betty Parkinson, my white Nanna, fell in love with and married a black man at a time when the racist White Australia Policy was popular and still in effect.  I cannot begin to imagine the hardships faced by these women.

My mother, Cheryl Ridgeway, was 17 years old when Australia voted overwhelmingly to recognise Indigenous folk as Australians, subject to Commonwealth law.  Until that moment, my mum and her father where technically subject to special laws of the state of NSW; whereas, her mum, being white, was subject to the Commonwealth.

From what I have been told, my mum, from a very early age, was acutely aware of the fact that she was different.  She describes a lonely childhood, unable to make friends because her father was black.  But, my mum is strong, strong enough to set off for Papua New Guinea at 20 with her new husband, not knowing what life would be like.  Mum raised four children on her own in PNG and Fiji while my father worked long hours as a missionary teacher.  It must have been very lonely for her, isolated from any family support, in a different culture.  I remember when mum's mother got cancer and passed away.  Mum had to leave us in PNG for a time, but she came back and cared for us through her grief.

I am deeply grateful for the sacrifices made by the women in my life.

Because of her, we can.