AB: I’d like to start off by asking you about your childhood.
KR: I always tell everybody that I’m a fruit-picker by trade. I come from the paddocks and I’m very proud to be a cherry picker’s daughter. I’m a bushy. We’re a pretty big mob and my family come from Condobolin. Condo’s where I grew up. It was an amazing community; we all knew each other, who we were, where we come from; there were close knit families. You went to school with a big mob and that was really important. We were fruit-pickers and that meant that we had to go to other towns to pick the fruit: Griffith with the grapes, Leeton with the oranges, Cowra with the tomatoes, cherries at Young and Orange.
It wasn’t an easy life as kids. In those days Aboriginal people weren’t given pensions; we had to earn our living and that’s…