A YEAR spent as a ‘house mother’ in a remote Catholic-run Aboriginal boarding house has given Erin Gordon a new outlook on life.
The 19 year-old from Ballarat in Victoria spent four semesters looking after eight Aboriginal children between the ages of six and 10, cooking, cleaning and performing all the tasks associated with being a ‘mother’.
Erin volunteered to work at the Pallottine-run Wandalgu Hostel, 150 km east of Geraldton in Western Australia.
She said she wanted to do something a bit different on her break between finishing school and starting university.
Her first choice had been to work in Kenya.
But there was a lot of fighting going on in Africa, so she was advised to get in touch with Fr Ray Hevern who was running Wandalgu Hostel at the time.
She was accepted for the position and moved to the hostel.
Wandalgu hostel caters for 80 Aboriginal students.
There are eight houses, four for girls and four for boys, with 10 students to each house plus a supervisor.
Primary students attended school on site and older children travelled to a high school an hour away.
Erin, a former Loreto College student, said she now appreciated the work her own mother Lyn has done through her life and saw extended family connections in a new light.
‘Living with Aboriginal people gives you an insight into the importance of extended family,’ she said.
Erin has been accepted at Monash University in Melbourne to study medicine.
But she liked the Western Australia experience so much she has applied to study medicine in Perth.
‘I am still waiting to hear if I have been accepted there. I should know by January 16,’ she said.
Erin said she would like to study indigenous health or paediatrics and work in remote indigenous communities.
