Australian Dictionary of Biography

Connie Bush, at Investiture Ceremony with Sir Zelman Cowen at Government House, 1981

Libraries & Archives NT

Constance Doreen Bush (1919–1997), teacher, cook, and welfare officer, was born Doreen Turner on 15 June 1919 at Borroloola, Northern Territory, daughter of Norah, Garrwa woman, and Adelaide-born Thomas James Turner, mounted police constable. As an Aboriginal child with European heritage, Doreen, or Connie as she was later known after choosing the name Constance at her baptism, was targeted for removal by authorities. She was soon taken by Frederick Blitner, a trepanger who was working for the police, to the Roper River mission, Mirlinbarrwarr, which was run by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). Her mother was permitted to accompany her and lived at the mission. The arrangement ended in 1924 when Turner, with other children of mixed heritage, were forcibly removed to Emerald River mission on Groote Eylandt, leaving their families behind. She lived with the trauma and grief of that separation for the rest of her life. ‘My world had crashed,’ she later remembered. ‘What would I do without my mother?’ (Bush 1990, 14).

The children at Emerald River were isolated and often experienced neglect and abuse. Discipline was strict, involving physical punishments such as the strap, and the children were required to undertake manual labour and learn to assimilate into white society. ‘We were nearly always hungry,’ remembered Turner (Bush 1990, 15). Her daily chores began at dawn with milking the goats, followed by school and work in the mission garden, and afternoon chores such as washing, ironing, mending, scrubbing, or tidying. Thursday afternoons were kept for free time, though every day ended as it began—with tending the goats.

In 1938 Turner began teaching at the mission school. Missionaries reported that after only two months the children were doing ‘good, steady work under Constance’ and that she felt being a teacher at the mission might be ‘God’s plan for her’ (The Open Door 1938, 15–16). In early 1941 she travelled to Darwin to visit her mother and undertake nursing training. Soon after, Alfred Frederick Bush, an Aboriginal man and labourer she knew from Emerald River, wired the CMS’s Aborigines Committee in Sydney to ask for approval to marry Turner. The committee were sorry to lose her as a teacher but gave their blessing and sent a gift of five pounds. The couple were married that year in Darwin.

With the bombing of Darwin in 1942, Bush evacuated to New South Wales and Victoria. Her husband stayed behind to serve with the Citizen Military Forces until 1946. She received an official exemption from the provisions of the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918–1943 in 1944 and was no longer ‘deemed to be a half-caste’ (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette 1944, 738) for the purposes of the Act. After the war, she returned to Darwin, where she raised ten children and worked as a cook. Her daughter Holly remembered that although life was hard, they were good years ‘because mum did everything—not just for us, but for all the people who used to come in from the bush for help and advice’ (Mackinolty 1997, 17). Two of Bush’s children, twins Alison and Jenny, would pursue highly successful careers in Aboriginal health.

Bush was selected as a delegate to the National Aboriginal Seminar in 1969, where she provided advice on Aboriginal experiences to the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, alongside other prominent women such as the lawyer Quentin Bryce. Having grown up on a ‘half-caste’ mission where she was segregated from other Aboriginal people, she had until then ‘never felt myself as being Aboriginal’ (NAA A463). Her participation in the seminar helped her identify with Aboriginal causes and she subsequently devoted herself to women’s and Aboriginal issues.

Returning to Groote Eylandt in the early 1970s, Bush worked as a welfare officer for the Northern Territory Department of Community Development. She and her husband subsequently lost many of their possessions when Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin in 1974. The following year, she was seconded to the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs to chair a series of women’s conferences in Aboriginal communities in the territory. She also worked for the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service.

In 1978 Bush was appointed an inaugural member of the National Women’s Advisory Council. She represented the women of the Northern Territory and was the only First Nations person on the council. In her role, which she held for two years, she toured the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia, consulting with Indigenous and non-Indigenous women living in remote areas. She later raised concerns about lack of access to childcare, suitable housing, health services, and alcohol abuse. In 1990 she received a research grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to conduct oral history interviews with Groote Eylandt elders, recording stories of the Macassans, traditional bushcraft, the mission days, and the flying boat base on Groote Eylandt, as well as Anindilyakwa language and songs. From the late 1980s, she lived in a small flat at Coconut Grove, Darwin. Predeceased by her husband and two of her children, she died of cancer on 19 September 1997 in Darwin.

Known as Aunty Connie in her later years, Bush was widely admired as a fair-minded, compassionate, and gracious woman. A Stolen Generations survivor, she was a strong advocate and fighter for Aboriginal women, particularly in the Northern Territory. She loved fishing and cooking, and while living on Groote Eylandt, often invited members of the community for a freshly caught meal. Notwithstanding the injustices she experienced as a child, she maintained contact with missionaries and related fond as well as painful memories. She would ‘always be grateful to those people who gave up everything […] to come up into the unknown parts of the Northern Territory to care for us’ (Bush 1990, 20). In recognition of her service to Aboriginal women, she had been appointed MBE in 1982. A street at Alyangula, Groote Eylandt, was named in her honour.