Matron Hyde made sacrifices for Aboriginal children these critics wouldn’t dream of making

How dare politicians shamelessly twist a story of a great Australian to make this country seem racist when the truth is so much more inspiring.

A sad thing about our politicians’ tributes to Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue after her death last weekend is that they trashed a great Australian who helped her when no one else would.

And they made this country seem racist, when the truth is so much more inspiring.

O’Donoghue was rightly praised this week by both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

Abandoned as a child in the Outback, she became a nurse and an admired Aboriginal leader, appointed the first chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

Tributes have flowed for Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue after her death.

It’s a great story, but if there’s one topic where the truth is shamelessly twisted, it’s race politics.

Albanese gave an emotional speech implying O’Donoghue was a member of the so-called “stolen generations” who’d been treated badly by those who’d taken her.

Another story of racist Australia.

“Life threw significant challenges at her,” he said, “not least a childhood in which she was separated from her family, her language, even the date of her birth and, indeed, her own name … from the earliest days of her life, Dr O’Donoghue endured discrimination.”

Linda Burney, the disastrous Indigenous Australians Minister, peddled the same divisive story: “The Matron of the Colebrook Children’s Home in South Australia where she grew up, told her that she wouldn’t amount to anything.”

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney peddled the divisive story. Picture: Martin Ollman

That matron actually has a name – Ruby-May Hyde – and how sad that even Peter Dutton went along with disparaging the first hero in O’Donoghue’s life.

No, O’Donoghue was not “stolen”, even if she said so for years and was co-patron of the National Sorry Day Committee.

Her father, Tom O’Donoghue, was a stockman of an Irish family, and had six children with Yunamba, an Aboriginal woman.

Over the years, he sent four away to be raised by missionaries.

Lowitja (front left) with siblings Geoffrey and Eileen (back) and Amy and Violet (front). Picture: Lowitja O'Donoghue Collection

Then, in 1934, he brought Lowitja to the tiny Colebrook home run by Hyde and another Christian missionary, Sister Delia Rutter.

Why is unclear. Some parents sent their Aboriginal children to the sisters for an education.

O’Donoghue, who had no memory of her father, told me a darker story when I rang her in 2001, to ask if she really had been “stolen” – as she was saying.

“I would see myself as a removed child, and not necessarily stolen,” she admitted.

“I don’t like the word ‘stolen’ and it’s perhaps true that I’ve used the word loosely at times.”

But by “removed”, she meant her father had sent her away: “He didn’t want to be straddled with five kids … I haven’t forgiven him.”

That’s the real tragedy in her life: given away by her parents.

But she was not stolen, and girls with her in Colebrook deny they were stolen, either.

For instance, Nancy Barnes started her fascinating autobiography: “We are referred to as the ‘Stolen Generation’. I consider myself saved.”

Faith Thomas told the ABC: “Had I not been in Colebrook, I would never have got the opportunities I did have, so I consider myself not stolen but chosen.”

Both knew the hardship from which Matron Hyde saved them.

Both knew what they owed to the education and love they got from Hyde and Rutter.

Barnes became South Australia’s first qualified Aboriginal kindergarten director and a prominent activist.

Thomas became a nurse and a fast bowler in the Australian women’s Test team.

Far from being told they’d be no good, these girls – and O’Donoghue – were given the skills to earn their own living. Far from being treated badly by Hyde and Rutter, Thomas remembers the “constant love and attention from these two remarkable ladies”.

So who was Matron Hyde, now freely abused by well-paid politicians as someone who did O’Donoghue wrong?

Hyde was born in 1891 and studied at the Melbourne Bible Institute before going to work and learn at a children’s home in NSW.

At 34, she went to the dust of remote South Australia to look after Aboriginal children in a United Aboriginal Mission home.

Two years later, she and Rutter and 12 Aboriginal children for whom they were caring moved to Quorn to open their Colebrook Children’s Home.

For 25 years, these heroic women looked after Aboriginal children who’d been abandoned, neglected or unwanted, scrabbling for donations and often living in hardship themselves.

How dare politicians now, in their airconditioned offices, disrespect Matron Hyde decades later – a woman who made sacrifices for Aboriginal children like none of these critics would dream of making themselves?

Yes, praise O’Donoghue. But also praise the missionary who saved her.

It’s a story of reconciliation, isn’t it?