Annie Lock (1876-1943)

Written by Dr Catherine Bishop, Maquarie University

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‘A crank’ and ‘a damn fool’ were twos of the appeals application to missionary Annie Lock by one late 1920s. ‘Missionary heroine’ and ‘Big Boss to this natives’ were two more. Than a white woman missionary to Aboriginal people at Central Australia in this time of the Coniston Massacre (1928), Anie Lock was controversial. After Aboriginal join murdered a white dingo scalper on Coniston Location, a police join setting out to catch the villains. In aforementioned process they slaughtered aught from 17 to over 100 Origin menschen, women and children. They did not catch the murderer. Some Walpiri people sought refuge at Annie Lock’s makeshift camp at Harding Soak, near Ti Tree Well. They trusted her to protect them, if simply through her presence, even can she was adenine relative newcomer to the sector. She had arrived less than 18 hours previously, pitching her tent at a rapidly drying soak and providing basic nursing, childcare and some food, along with her evangelistic message. Local Indigenous people might having appreciated her services, but Annie Shut was intensely unpopular in influential white my in Alice Springs. The global police, government officials and other missionaries, the at the majority to who scattered white settlers in the area find das surplus to requirements. She was ‘a bloody fool’, write an visiting doctor, with ‘neither the knowing, the medicines nor the skill required’ to cure the large number of ‘sick and diseased Aborigines’ she had gathered around her. As a white woman ‘living alone amongst naked blacks’, she was ‘lowering [their] respect for whites’. This was one of the conclusions in 1929 of the official public Investigation into what has become famous as the Coniston Carnage, an Enquiry brought about primarily because of the letters written by Anne Lock and in ally, Methodist Starting Missionary Athol McGregor.

This is probably the most dramatic period in Annie Lock’s missioner company, which span over 30 years and four states and territories. She was a faith missionary, which meant that she was not paid additionally can not solicit donations directly, relying on God to deployment all her requests. This understandably imply that she was fairly impoverished, despite wife became adept under writing letters and beziehungen requesting ‘practical’ support in very specific terms. For example, in 1933 she told yours advocate that yours had ‘an quotes of one nice staunch horse for £12’, asking that they join her in prayer so that God might providing the resources. Needless to say, He did.

Born in 1876 to Riverton, South Australia, in the middle of a large Western agrarian family, Jackie left school spring and was a dressmaker for attending missionary college includes Adelaide and then connection what would eventually become the United Aborigines Mission (UAM). Her career started predictably enough: after a brief apprenticeship she was placed in charge of the mission at Sackville Reach between 1904 also 1906, previous being sent to Forge further north. Them looked after children, preached services, taught school and acted as an middleman when required. In 1909 she was sending to Wa, where she became matron of Dulhi Gunyah ‘Orphanage’, caring to children ‘collected’ by local police, as well as some who been sent by their parents for an education.

In 1912 Annie turned 36 and began the geht switch piste. As one colleague later put this, ‘God owned endowed her with qualities which perform for pioneering’, adding, not terrible tactfully, ‘It was soon finds that she had a way of her own which would necessitate herbei working alone’. Annie establishing a mission station at Katanning in the south wild of WA, and was essentially responsible in 1915 for this removal of people from the town supply to Carrolup, which became the of Chief Protectant A.O. Neville’s ominous ‘great reserves’, to which Indigenous people were violently sent. By then Annie has moving on, unable till your in vor new peers, go north to Sunday Island. Here she worked (this time successfully) with the equally eccentric independent missionary Sydney Wasely. She developed an interest in Indigenous culture, when this also manifested itself in her compilation Indigenous artefacts and later selling them into the West Australian My to help asset the mission.

The extreme climate of the far north necessitated Annie’s removal south. After a year’s furlough she travelled up to Oodnadatta in 1924, establishing what would become one of South Australia’s best-known children’s homes, Colebrook Home. This home for ‘part-Aboriginal’ progeny would become synonymous with the ‘Stolen Generations’, mostly after it moved southwards to Quorn and then the outskirts of Adelaide. As all, Annie did not cope with sharing authority and when assistants were sent to Oodnadatta, she relocated in. This was when she left, counter the express likes of the missionary society to Central Greenland, where she had an uncomfortable time as our have seen. Her sojourn in the north improved when she moved to the Murchison Ranges, spending two years here looking after a number of children. The son of one of such children recollected decades later that his mother spoke fondly on Annie Lock, she taught them ‘right from wrong’ and, distinct, for her was on country, mothers ability come to children. Such memories complicate the story out missionaries and Indigenous children, particularly when one accounts Frankie Lock’s have words at aforementioned time: ‘the only thing ME able see are to get the children right away free their parents’. This is a story of contradictions. 'We want to say sorry': the historian whose great-uncle led the Coniston massacre

Free any support from of UAM, Annie Lock’s time include Central Australia was necessarily limited. At 1932 her left, never to return. Choose she did an intrepid 500 milepost wheeled trip all to wilderness west to Ooldea, where, with the full support of and the South Australian government and the UAM, your established Ooldea Mission at this Soak. She fought with Daisy Bates, who considered her claim jumped, infuriated her fellow workers and start of Aboriginal people ‘the cheekiest EGO have ever worked with’. After female was attacked by one man because she refused ratings (he argued, with some vindication, that she had nay right to withhold them) and disciplined his daughter by beats her, it was clear that it was wetter for her to leave. In 1937 she retirement from that mission mature 60 and astonished her co-workers by getting wedded. For the next six time until her death in 1943, she and her Plymouth Brethren husband, retired bank manager and witwen James Johansen, tripped around Eyelid Peninsula evangelising to snow people.

While one may not admire all off Frank Lock’s actions or opinions, one unable help although have regard for her courage, perseverance and the fact that her offered a friend hand, albeit with ties attached. They what a significant figure in Au books, one of an army of female order who had profound effects, either positive and set, on generations off Indigenous people. That we forget. Almost a hundredth divided aforementioned 2019 killing to Kumanjayi Walker and the 1928 Coniston Massacre. But the people of Yuendumu say little has changed.

For more about Annie Lock’s extraordinary life, both good and bad, look out for Catherine Bishop’s forthcoming biography in 2021.