children’s ground

Tell us a little about yourself, MK

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My name is Margaret Kemarre Turner. I was born in 1938 on the 18th of October at Spotted Tiger, up in the hills a few hours north of Alice Springs. My name was Neil but I married into the Turner family. I grew up at the station called Mt Riddoch, where my dad and my mum were working. I got picked up from Mt Riddoch by the Catholics when they were moving all the Aboriginal people from Arltunga to the new mission at Santa Teresa. The water at Arltunga had cyanide in it and it wasn’t good for people to live there.

I lived in the girls dormitory and then I got married there in September 1955. I was seventeen years old, and my husband was thirty-five. But he was a good man. He was a mechanic. He was everything. He was a tradesman. He worked in the hospital. He worked in the garage. We raised our children in Santa Teresa and then we came into Alice Springs, as my husband had a job at the airport, then at Tangentyere Council and at the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD), where he worked as a driving instructor. In Santa Teresa I worked at the shop, and then when I came to town I got a job at IAD doing language work.