Handy Way To Support Reconciliation

Central Coast Herald

Monday May 31, 2004

By GABRIEL FOWLER

AUSTRALIA needed to renew its focus on the reconciliation process with no event to mark its relevance since the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk, Joyce Dukes said yesterday.

Mrs Dukes was one of the co-ordinators of the Reconciliation Celebration at Gosford's Kibble Park on Saturday where a Sea of Hands was planted.

She said that while the community's understanding of Aboriginal people's heritage and the region's links to it was growing, there needed to be a more wholistic approach.

Born on a mission in East Arnhem Land run by the Anglican Church, Mrs Dukes was displaced in 1942 when she and her mother were moved to Mulgoa, south of Penrith.

``Because of the bombing of Darwin, we were evacuated and we were relocated to Mulgoa," Mrs Dukes said.

``We were there for seven years until the church realised: `Oh, these people have got to go back to the Northern Territory'."

Mrs Dukes said she had to fight for the right to be allowed to remain living near where her mother was working as a domestic in Sydney.

Later, she had to fight to go to high school in Penrith, and she had to fight again for the right to study nursing.

Mrs Dukes moved to the Central Coast nine years ago and has six children and eight grandchildren who visit her regularly.

In 2000 she began the Central Coast Reconciliation Group and said since the group started she had watched the community make a great deal of progress.