Rhonda Wardman remembers her experiences at St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst:
I went to St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst when it was very new. I went from a loving Nanna in a homely old terrace full of love, food, photos, furniture and family to nothing but bare emptiness, starvation, bullying from a Nun.
There was a large playroom with a red laminex table and six chairs and an empty bookcase – nothing, nothing but emptiness (and my tears).
In my time there I saw no toys – no books – heard no radio, emptiness everywhere, quiet – pain and crying.
In the dining room there were six red laminex tables and chairs, that’s all. Empty – no sound. In the dormitories there were chrome beds with pink chenille bedspreads and some bedside tables that were empty – emptiness everywhere.
53 years later I can remember each stick of furniture and the pain of emptiness.
Sister B told me constantly, ‘You are the spawn of the devil, Rhonda Wardman, put here by God to be punished, born bad, never wanted. You are the spawn of the devil!’
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