Then Margaret had a nice little girl from another farm come to have a holiday with her. She got a bit cheeky with her little friend and I told her
‗This is your guest. You ought to treat her as a guest.‘ As I was saying it Mrs Cashmore just happened to walk in the door.
‗What‘s going in here?‘ she said. I‘m just telling Margaret, as she‘s picking on Roma, that if you have a
guest you have to treat her as a guest.‘ Well, Mrs Cashmore flew at me for telling her daughter off. I flew back at
her and ended up shouting, ‗Well, if that‘s the way you feel – you can keep yo
ur job. I‘m off.‘ p. 131. Mrs. Cashmore who happened to have caught Alice telling off her
daughter got angry. However, Alice bravely told Mrs. Cashmore that it was okay for her job to be taken away if Mrs. Cashmore cannot accept what Alice did to her
daughter. What Alice did, needs courage to correct what is wrong. Alice‘s
reaction proved that she is a brave person. Another proof that shows Alice was a brave woman was that she does not
remain quiet when she was accused falsely. Instead, she bravely gave her reasons to prove that she has done nothing wrong. This happened when Alice was accused
for having squandered her money. With her bravery, Alice proved her innocence even when others were trying to blame her.
‗Who said that, I‘ll skin that person,‘ I said. ‗They should mind their own business. You want to see something?‘ and I put my hand under the pram
and pulled this COD parcel out. ‗This is where my money goes. I don‘t know whoever told you I was squandering my money, but in here are
articles I‘ve got for my kids. This belongs to the kids, and I spend it on the kids p. 188.‘
Alice reactions towards many situations that she was encountered have shown that she was indeed a brave person. However, because of her identity as
part of the Aborigines society, the white people still had power over many aspects in the society which made Alice could not win over the white people by herself as
part of the colonized society.
4. Independent
Another trait of Alice is that she is an independent person since she was a little girl. Alice who was taken away from her family since she was a little girl
had to learn to adjust in every circumstances which had made her grew up as an independent person. ―I had to learn through experience and picking up little bits
here and there on my own p. 69. ‖ In her experiences, Alice learned everything
on her own independently in order to survive. Alice also learnt to stand up for herself. It proves that she was an independent person since she had no one to rely
on. However, Alice ‘s independence through years even surprised others who met
her. ―I had to learn to stand up for myself well and truly over the years, and it
always took people by surprise when I did p. 189. ‖ Through the author‘s explicit
explanation who was Alice herself, it is clear that Alice was an independent person.
5. Critical
Alice is also a critical person in a way that whenever the situations around her, she thought was not right, she started to criticize whether it was only inside
her mind or directly confronted against it. There was a time when Alice used to have a flashback and think to herself
what really happened to her. Whenever she looked back, she started to think critically to figure out what actually happened that others might not have even
thinking about.
I often think back to this time and I think everything was arranged before we ever left the North. It was a cunning way to get me, to trick my mother
by telling her I was going off to be educated, then brought back to be with them when I turned eighteen p. 45.
Here, it can be seen that Alice knew that something was not right when
she was taken away from her family. Alice critically pointed out how the whites cunningly deceived her mother that Alice was taken to be educated when she was
not. Even though Alice was only thinking to herself, it was critical of her to have such thought that she could put the odds together which made sense to her.
Another proof which shows how Alice was being critical is when the white people did not like how Alice carries
her father‘s family name which was Basset. The white people seemed to hate the fact that Alice‘s father was a white
man who might have come from a big family. They wanted to deny the fact that Alice was half white, yet they always wanted Alice to live according to the white
people‘s ways. I think this is the one main thing I‘m bitter about today, depriving me of
my father. It just makes no sense. They wanted me to have white people‘s ways, yet they denied me my father. How does that make any sense? p.
51.
Alice was criticizing the white people‘s behavior that did not like her to carry her father‘s name because her father was a white person. She criticized how
the white people always wanted her to go their ways but denied the fact that Alice‘s father was also a white man. She even thought to herself that there is a
possibility that they hate the fact that Alice‘s father came from a big family. ―See, they probably didn‘t like me having my father‘s name because he came from such
a big family up there p. 62. ‖ The fact that Alice bears her father‘s family name
was disliked by the white people. Alice was being critical to see through why the white people did not like her carrying her father‘s name because she was an
Aborigine. Even in the camp where Alice was put into, Alice was criticizing the way
they had fed her and the other Aborigines although she did not complain about it directly. Alice thought that the way they fed the Aborigines by giving them
inappropriate food which she could not eat is one way of how the white people degrading the Aborigine‘s level as human being.
I couldn‘t eat the soup before I worked there, but when I saw this I definitely couldn‘t eat it. See, I wasn‘t brought up like that. My mother
was a beautiful cook and we ate lovely meals back home. I think they did things like this to deliberately lower us; well, degrade us really
p. 64.
Alice also had a critical thought about how the inheritance of the Aborigines never passed down to the person who had the right to have the
inheritance. Instead, the inheritance was taken by the Aborigines department. Just like how her father‘s inheritance never got into Alice‘s hands.
[…] I‘ve since found out that when this happened, if Aboriginal people received an inheritance, any money left to them became the property of the
Aborigines department. I don‘t understand that, we are all human beings, we should have been entitled to it. I could have really used that money my
father left me, and it would have made the world of difference to my family p. 179.
Seeing this, Alice thought that the Aborigines were not treated like human beings by the white people
. Alice‘s ways of thinking which are shown through the author‘s explicit explanation, who was Alice herself, proved that she was a critical
person.
