Lousy Little Sixpence

Alec Morgan, Gerry Bostock | Australia 1983 | 54 min

When Lousy Little Sixpence was first screened it caused shock and disbelief in Australia because viewers couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Lousy Little Sixpence tells the story of five children, now Elders and representatives for an entire generation, who were stolen from their families by the Australian government to turn them into unpaid servants for white families.

The documentary uses old newsreels, archive film, photographs (most of which has never been shown before) and bleak, simple interviews which show that healing from such horrendous treatment will not be easy.

The title 'Lousy Little Sixpence' refers to the amount of pocket money the indentured workers were supposed to be given - but never received - while their wages were managed by their 'employers', on behalf of the Aborigines Protection Board.

Lousy Little Sixpence is an influential film in highlighting the injustice of stolen wages, and the fight for the rightful payment to be made to Indigenous peoples of that generation or their families.

[A] lot of little girls died at Cootamundra. And that was run by the Aborigines Protection Board, you know, protecting Aborigines. But they were sending them out to work for sixpence a week. That's what my sisters got, sixpence a week.—Geraldine Briggs, Stolen Generations survivor [1]

Cast	Chicka Dixon Geraldine Briggs Flo Caldwell Bill Reid Violet Shaw Margaret Tucker narrator stolen child stolen child stolen child stolen child stolen child
Release dates	1983 - Australia
Video/DVD Release Date	not available
Awards	not available
Rating	G - General
Language level	not available
Distributor	Ronin Films
Soundtrack	not available
Genre	Documentary, Historical
Notes	Lousy Little Sixpence tells the story chronologically from 1901, when the NSW Aborigines Protection Board decided to take children away, to the mid-1930s, the Aboriginal people began to organise, and to fight the Board. The system of removing children persisted up to the late 1970s, meaning the painful memories are still carried by survivors and their families today. Lousy Little Sixpence took three years to research and produce [2]. Philip Noyce's film Rabbit Proof Fences was influenced by Lousy Little Sixpence.
Find this movie	Indigenous film suppliers and distributors

We were accused of fabricating the evidence.—Gerry Bostock, producer [2]

There was a hunger [in 1983] in the wider community to learn more about Aboriginal people, as nothing was out there.—Alec Morgan, producer [2]

Where to from here?

• Read about the horrors of the Stolen Generations
• Find out about the Stolen Wages
• Stolen Wages timeline

[1] 'It was just getting dark', Geraldine Briggs, p.162 (her emphasis) [2] '25 years on, classic film still shocks', Koori Mail 437 p.34