Aunty Flo’s family members were massacred. She’s sharing her harrowing memories to be part of change

One day Aunty Flo Watson's mother slapped her for being happy.

She had been walking with friends barefoot home from school, laughing and having fun.

"And she said, 'You should not be happy'. And we didn't know what that was about until later. And she said, 'We were happy. We were laughing. We were on the river,'" Aunty Flo recalled.

That was the moment she found out her mother, Doris Maytown, had survived a massacre.

A generation earlier, in far north Queensland , Maytown had also been laughing and having fun – when the troopers started shooting.

That massacre, at Palmer River in north Queensland, took place in the 1930s. Maytown's mother and baby brother were both killed. Maytown herself, just four years old, survived a gunshot wound to the leg, and was later made to walk more than 100km in chains.

Recounting these events, Aunty Flo, a Ghunghanghi elder from Yarrabah in north Queensland, began to cry.

It was the third day of hearings of Queensland's truth-telling and healing inquiry.

Aunty Flo, a member of the stolen generations, also testified about her own experiences being forcibly taken from her family: first, to the rural town of Charters Towers, and then Brisbane.

The Brisbane she spoke of had a system akin to the American south. When she was young, it was a "sundown town", with a curfew for Indigenous people from about 6pm applying within the borders of the streets and roads called "boundary", she said. That was in the 1960s.

The inquiry is taking place less than 100 metres away from one of them, still called Boundary Street, West End.

Aunty Flo needed another break before finally finishing.

"Although I'm in my 70s, I want to be a part of the change," she said.

"It's something that we've been saying for years, and now all of a sudden it's here. So thank you, and thanks for letting me be a part of it."

The elephant in the room is that Aunty Flo, one of the first witnesses to give evidence at the historic inquiry, could also be among the last.

Memories of cruelty In its first three days of hearings, the inquiry heard from seven witnesses.

One witness described being "physically, sexually and mentally" abused at the Cherbourg boys' home, like many others.

Another testified about being "ripped off" to the tune of two-thirds of her meagre wage, under the protection system many witnesses described as sanctioning "slave labour" .

Prof Tracey Bunda told the inquiry on Wednesday of a time when one of her family members stood up to the authorities at a mission.

She wouldn't eat the black-eyed peas served to her, and so was sent to bed with nothing. The exact same bowl was served to her the next day and the next.

"They kept serving these black-eyed peas to a seven-year-old until they had got mouldy," Bunda said.

"And when she told that story, she'd say, 'There was no way in this world I was going to let them get the better of me – I was going to break them, they weren't going to break me.'"

Aunty Flo described being at school when "all of a sudden" an adult appeared armed with a ruler.

"Later we found out they measured our heads. Phrenology," she said.

While Queensland's Protection Act ended in 1972, the state protection system did not end entirely until 1986.

A new public record Under the 2023 Path to Treaty Act, the truth inquiry will run for three years.

Though led by Aboriginal lawyers, in no way does it feel like a court, or even a coronial inquest.

The purpose is not to name names: journalists are not permitted to record sessions because the inquiry does not have the power to make suppression orders, and cannot levy a punishment. It deliberately cannot compel anyone outside government to attend.

At the gigantic Convention and Exhibition Centre, inquiry participants bump shoulders with attenders of the Australian tactical medical conference, the Early Childhood Australia national conference and the 2024 Dolphins NRL presentation ball.

Organisers have rooms set up for elders to rest. Every session begins with an urging of those who need it to seek mental health support from one of two staff assigned for the purpose.

Occasionally, a witness will ask a friend in the audience to fill in a detail. Sometimes, hundreds will applaud.

The inquiry chair, Joshua Creamer, has repeatedly emphasised that its purpose is not to punish but to create an "authoritative public record" of the cost of colonisation.

For many participants, it's the opportunity to get their story on the record that is the most important – and quickly.

As counsel assisting Melia Benn said at the start of the week, many were " dying for their story to be heard ".

The precarious path to treaty The Queensland opposition leader, David Crisafulli, voted for the Path to Treaty legislation last year, but changed his mind after the failure of last year's voice referendum.

Queensland had the highest no vote in Australia.

This week in Cairns, Crisafulli reiterated his vow to repeal the legislation if he wins at the state election in October.

The repealing of the legislation would mean the end of the inquiry.

"I saw what happened during the [voice] referendum, and I'm not prepared to put Queensland through what I saw federally," he said.

Bunda, however, said there is absolutely nothing divisive about the truth.

"I think it's a very interesting argument that they're putting forth, that it's divisive. Some things change, some things stay the same," she said.

"I would rather live in a country that celebrates its difference, rather than look upon its difference and say, here is a point of division."

The inquiry will sit again on Tuesday next week to hear from a string of directors general and other state bureaucrats, plus the commissioner of the Queensland police.