Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert - The Cherry Pickers Daughter

Note from the publisher

The day after we received the very last corrections and amendments to the manuscript from Aunty Kerry, she quietly passed away on her final journey to the Tjukurpa. Right up to the end, we received the warmest, most caring emails from her, just making sure everything was in order, that the manuscript was exactly as she wanted it, that the photos were all there and the captions finalised and correct, that the cover was exactly as she envisaged. She touched our hearts with her love, her humility, her talents and an extraordinary life dedicated to helping others in so many ways. We feel both humbled and honoured that she trusted us with the task of bringing this important and timely story into the light of day at a time when Aboriginal history is being redefined and rewritten by First Nations storytellers. All Australians need to know the truth of the lived experiences of our First Nations sisters and brothers since Europeans arrived, and the rich cultural heritage that has sustained them through the recent brutal history, and their ancestors and this precious continent for millennia.

To that end, Wild Dingo Press has founded a new imprint with Wakka Wakka Wulli Wulli writer, academic and songwoman, Tjanara Goreng Goreng. Deadly Dingo Books has been set up to publish, exclusively, the work of First Nations writers. The Cherry Pickers Daughter is the foundation title to be released by this new imprint. While the author dedicated her book to her Mummy, we dedicate our Deadly Dingo Books to the author, Kerry Reed-Gilbert.

Praise for The Cherry Pickers Daughter

A wonderful yarn by an Aboriginal Elder about a bygone way of life.

Melissa Lucashenko, award-winning Goorie author, 2019 Miles Franklin award winner

The opening of this memoir is grounded in an acute sense of place and belonging. Kerry tells the reader: Our families have been here for a long, long time, right from the very start. This unbroken connection to place and people permeates the narrative as Kerry recalls a life of tremendous difficulty and stress, always with a sense of unflappability, courage, determination and humour. You gotta laugh! is a mantra that appears throughout the work

The Cherry-Pickers Daughter is the book that all Australia needs to read for its testimony to courage, determination and resilience; and for what it says about activism that takes place a long way from public venues and media. As the statement at the front makes clear: This book is dedicated to Mummy. The life of Joyce Hutchings should signal a reassessment of the way Aboriginal activism has been viewed to date.

Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri writer and academic

If you were touched by Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, youll treasure this book. The exquisite prose is simple, matter-of-fact yet intimate, like a child whispering secrets to a friend. Aunty Kerry, a Wiradjuri elder, an activist, poet and educator, sadly passed in July, adding poignancy. Everyone should read this, and ponder how we unjustly trap people within our judgements.

Robert OHearn, Booktopia

The Cherry Pickers Daughter: a childhood memoir brings alive a true story of a blended Koori family in New South Wales in the 1950s through the eyes of a young daughter, the author. A hardworking Koori family, river people, building bridges across rivers, love, towns, racism, truths and intergenerational trauma. The familys survival shaped by seasonal fruit-picking and a constant fear of the the welfares power to remove the children.

Charmaine Papertalk Green, poet, writer and artist

Thank you, Kerry, for sharing your storyso much pain and hurt, but such life-affirming strength and love too.

Kate Grenville AO, award-winning author

Kids bounce into this world with such capacity for hope and love and attachment; how painful it was to read the ways this was betrayed by an Australia that I wish had known better. This memoir felt important in my hands, historical, vitaland joyful. It described a childhood I needed to know, and filled me with deepest admiration and respect. I cried many tears for Kerry Reed-Gilbert and was so grateful for her wonderful Mummy.

Sofie Laguna, award-winning author

An unflinching memoir of courage and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds by a remarkable Wiradjuri woman, that speaks to her spirit and strength and to the love and courage of the woman who raised her. An important book for all Australians.

Joy Rhoades, author

At its heart, [The Cherry Pickers Daughter] is primarily a story of mothers and daughters both present and absent. This is a story about the fearlessness of Indigenous women; a stirring ode to a woman who worked to the bone to care for her children and to protect them as best she could from a world that threatened, ostracised and abused them. To borrow from Melissa Lucashenkos foreword, the fighting spirit of senior Wiradjuri women is a mighty thing.

Georgia Brough, ArtsHub

About the author

A Wiradjuri woman from Central New South Wales, Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert performed and conducted writing workshops nationally and internationally. She was the inaugural Chairperson of the First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN) 2012 2015 and 20172018 and continued as Patron until she passed away in 2019. In 2013 she co-edited a collection of works By Close of Business. She was a member of the ACT Us Mob Writing (UMW) group and was FNAWN co-editor for the Ora Nui Journal collaboration between First Nations Australia writers and Maori writers.

In 2015, Kerry was shortlisted for the Story Wine Prize. In 2016 and 2017 she compiled and edited editions of A Pocketful of Leadership in the ACT 2016 and A Pocketful of Leadership in First Nations Australia Communities, a collection of First Nations voices from across Australia. Kerry was a former member of the Aboriginal Studies Press Advisory Committee and her poetry and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies nationally and internationally, including in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. Her works have been translated into a number of languages including French, Korean, Bengali and Dutch.

Published by Deadly Dingo Books

Imprint of Wild Dingo Press

Melbourne, Australia

www.wilddingopress.com.au

First edition published by Deadly Dingo Books 2019

Second edition published by Deadly Dingo Books 2020

Text copyright Kerry Reed-Gilbert 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owners and the publisher of this book.

Designer: Debra Billson

Painting on cover by Mathew Merritt, 2020

Editor: Catherine Lewis

Printed in Australia.

Reed-Gilbert, Kerry, 1956-2019, author.

The Cherry Pickers Daughter / Kerry Reed-Gilbert.

ISBN: 9781925893311 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781925893328 (ebook:ePDF)

ISBN: 9781925893335 (ePub)

This book is dedicated to Mummy.

Authors Note

My name is Kerry Reed-Gilbert and I am an Aboriginal Elder of the Wiradjuri Nation. My journey in this lifetime has been one of growing up as the youngest of eight in a family that was blended sixty years before that term became fashionable. My family was a mixture of cousins, and mostly, we came in twos. We were raised by Mummy, my fathers older sister, Joyce. Mummy always has been my mother my entire life and hers. I am Mummys baby.