Mary Jane Cain
Mary Jane Cain, born Mary Jane Griffin in 1844, was a significant figure in the Coonabarabran region of New South Wales, Australia. She was the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father, and her life unfolded during a time of considerable hardship for Indigenous peoples due to colonization. After her first husband’s death, she married George Cain and together they raised nine children while living at Forky Mountain. In a determined effort to secure a stable future for her family, Cain made formal requests to the government for land, successfully establishing the Burra Bee Dee Aboriginal Reserve in 1892, which eventually expanded to nearly six hundred acres.
Cain was known for fostering a sense of community, welcoming displaced Aboriginal Australians and promoting self-sufficiency among her people. She played a crucial role in the social and cultural life of her community, remembered for her generosity and skills in cooking and sewing. Following her death, the community faced challenges as government policies shifted towards assimilation, leading to the decline of the Burra Bee Dee settlement. Nonetheless, Cain's legacy endures, honored through memorials and ongoing efforts by her descendants to preserve her story and the cultural significance of Burra Bee Dee.
Mary Jane Cain
Aboriginal land activist
- Born: February 18, 1844
- Birthplace: Toorawandi Station, New South Wales, Australia
- Place of death: Burra Bee Dee, Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia
Also known as: Queenie Cain, Queen Mary Jane, Mary Jane Griffin, Queen of Burrabeedee
Significance: Mary Jane Cain was an Aboriginal Australian. In the 1880s, she acquired land for her family at Forky Mountain. Over the years, a tight-knit community of her relatives and other displaced Indigenous people grew there. The land, known as Burra Bee Dee, and her people, the Gomeroi or Kamilaroi, are part of the Northern Tablelands Local Land Services region. In 1920, she wrote her life story and a list of Gomeroi words. Though the settlement was abandoned in the mid-twentieth century, decades later, family members worked to preserve it as a site of cultural and historical significance.
Background
Mary Jane Cain was born Mary Jane Griffin in 1844. Her parents were Jinnie Griffin, an Aboriginal woman, and Eugene Griffin, an Irishman. The nineteenth century was a time of violence and discrimination against Indigenous peoples in Australia. Many were pushed off their lands by colonizers. Cain’s parents worked as traveling salespeople for a time, but after many White workers left jobs on the pastoral frontier to mine for gold, stations were more open to hiring Aboriginal people. Her mother worked as a shepherd and her father was a dairyman on lands where her mother’s people, the Gomeroi, had lived for thousands of years.
Life’s Work
In the 1880s, Cain, her second husband, and her nine children were living at Forky Mountain near Coonabarabran. She took her goats to the mountain every day to graze or, on occasion, had to go to the mountain to retrieve them daily when they strayed. After her husband became ill, she wrote to Queen Victoria and the governor requesting land from the Crown. She later went to Sydney to request that the land on which they lived and worked be reserved or protected for them. She said she wanted her family to be self-sufficient and requested in addition that the land be fenced and the government provide seed so she could grow food.
On February 6, 1892, four hundred acres were gazetted, or officially declared reserved or titled by the government. The land about six miles from Coonabarabran was known as Forky (or Forked) Mountain Station. Over the next two decades, the reserve grew to almost six hundred acres as she welcomed many of her relatives who had been displaced from traditional lands. Others who had heard of Cain’s reserve also arrived seeking a place to live.
The community grew. The land was sufficient for them to survive on bush food, which included native vegetables and game such as fish, kangaroo, porcupine, and possum. They also ate introduced animals, notably goats and rabbits. They cobbled together materials including bark and metal tins to build shelters and made their own clothes, quilts, and rugs. The community celebrated weddings and holidays, including Christmas, and shared music and dancing. At the end of an evening’s entertainment in the early 1900s, those gathered would sing first “God Save the King” in honor of the British monarch and then “God Save the Queen” for Queenie Cain. Upon Cain’s death, local papers reported on the esteem members of the greater Coonabarabran community had for her.
As matriarch of her community, Cain displayed a generous spirit. She opened her doors and pocketbook to those in need. She instilled self-sufficiency, pride, and familial love in her clan. She was known for her cooking and sewing skills.
After Cain’s death, one of her daughters, Queenie Robinson, took over as leader of the community. She cared for the community and worked as a domestic until she moved off the mission in the 1940s so she would be eligible for a pension. Not long after this, the government began to move from claims of protecting Indigenous people to actively promoting assimilation. The government revoked many Aboriginal land grants. The Aborigines Protection Board took over management of the station and the government built housing, but residents began moving off the land. During the 1950s the Burra Bee Dee was deserted.
Impact
While she was not unique in securing a land grant, Cain built a community on it. She welcomed many displaced Aboriginal Australians to settle with her family. The manuscript of Cain’s life story is held at the State Library of New South Wales. She has been honored in several ways. The Coonabarabran Rotary Club erected a plaque recognizing her service to the community near a bridge named in her honor. In the twenty-first century, her descendants and others worked to develop Burra Bee Dee as a cultural and historical site of significance.
Personal Life
Mary Jane married Joseph Budsworth in 1857 when she was thirteen years old. They had two children together. He died in 1863. She married George Cain, an Aboriginal stockman, in 1865 at Weetalabah station. They had seven children.
Bibliography
“Central Western Plains: Reminiscences of the Coonabarabran District, 1920s.” State Library of New South Wales, gather.sl.nsw.gov.au/digital-heritage/central-western-plains-central-western-plains-reminiscences-coonabarabran-district. Accessed 1 July 2023.
Curthoys, Ann. “The Privilege of Being Born Aboriginal.” Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 11, no. 24, 1996, pp. 327–332. DOI: 10.1080/08164649.1996.9994830. Accessed 28 June 2023.
Heffernan, Elizabeth. “Mary Jane Cain (1844–1929).” Royal Australian Historical Society, 22 Feb. 2020, www.rahs.org.au/mary-jane-cain-1844-1929/. Accessed 28 June 2023.
Norman, Heidi. “Hidden Women of History: Mary Jane Cain, Land Rights Activist, Matriarch and Community Builder.” The Conversation, 17 Feb. 2019, theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-mary-jane-cain-land-rights-activist-matriarch-and-community-builder-110186. Accessed 1 July 2023.
Somerville, Margaret, and Marie Dundas. The Sun Dancin’: People and Place in Coonabarabran. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994.
Wood, Marilyn. “The Journey to ‘Forked Mountain.’” Aboriginal History, vol. 25, 2001, pp. 200–215, www.jstor.org/stable/45135480. Accessed 28 June 2023.