TRAINING HALF-CASTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23108, 6 February 1937, Page 23

TRAINING HALF-CASTES

MATRON'S LONELY WORK In the centre of Australia, 1000 miles from Darwin in the north and 987 miles from Adelaide in the south, the Government is training the half-castes of Australia to take their place as useful citizens (says an exchange). For two years it has been the duty of Mr and Mrs R. J. Jones to help in this work at Alice Springs, where the halfcaste Is given his or her chance in life. As matron of the Alice Springs Halfcaste Institution, of which her husband was superintendent, Mrs Jones was called upon to tend to the spiritual, as well as the physical, needs of these people. She has had babies as young as 12 months old to care for, although usually the children are not brought to the institution until they are two years of age. Mrs Jones was recently in Brisbane, en route to Darwin, where she went to join her husband, who was appointed curator of a Lepersarium Island, seven miles from Darwin, and she spoke of her work at Alice Springs. "They are a fine type of half-caste in this district, and the children grow up willing to make the best of life, Mrs Jones said. "Although they have no initiative, they are good workers and rarely disobedient. . "Of the 134 inmates at the institution 57 are girls being trained in housework. The girls make all their own clothes, and their daily cooking includes 70 loaves of bread. They may return to the institution on the loss of a position. The boys remain only until they are 14 years old, when they are usually apprenticed on cattle stations. They make excellent stockmen." Mrs Jones has given most of her life to the service of others. As a young girl she was trained as a nurse during the war, and later spent two years and a-half in Salonica. Greece, and Egypt, and later nursed on hospital ships. After the war she was one of the first nurses of the Australian Inland Mission to work at Victoria Rivers Downs. She is a member of the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses' Association.