National Library of Australia - Digital Collections - Audio

  • Ginibi, Ruby Langford, 1934- (interviewee)
  • Ruby Langford Ginibi interviewed by Frank Heimans [sound recording].
  • 2000 3 digital audio tapes (140 min.)
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Transcript (page 7 of 10)
Frank Heimans: So when you came to Sydney you came with Gwen and your father?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Just with Gwen and dad, thats all.
Frank Heimans: And where were you living?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Great Buckingham Street Redfern, number 22 Great Buckingham Street Redfern, little terrace houses there.
Frank Heimans: Thinking about your father and the relationship he had with his wife, his wife left him, of course, but did your father actually love your mother?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Of course. We were children of love, made of love, yeah. But they were young, they were very young.
Frank Heimans: Did he ever sort of forgive her for leaving him?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Wed run into her down Botany Road, Redfern, you know, and ...
Frank Heimans: This is your mother you mean?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Yeah, and she had a couple of the other kids that she had to Eddie Webb there. At first we didnt know who she was but the next minute shed be crying and coming towards us, wanting to talk to us, and dadd be hiding us and saying, Get away, you didnt want my kids, you didnt want them. Get away from them, youre not having anything to do with them. Go away, and dadd be crying and shed be crying and wed be crying, because we didnt know what was going on. But later on, at the insistence of Mum Joyce - Mum Joyces dads little lady he took up with and had two children to dad; she lived with him for about 18 years - shed say, You cant stop them from seeing their mother, shes their mother, and they became friends after a while, after they settled down. They just had to get rid of all the anger that was pent up there, I suppose.
Frank Heimans: Did your mother have a good life with the man that shed run away with?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Well, she had George and then she had Dorothy and Margaret and Robert, the youngest, to Eddie Webb. Yeah, I think she had the life she wanted. I mean, she never looked after us and she run away and left us but she certainly looked after them.
Frank Heimans: Did you ever ask your mother why she left you?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: No, they were young and ... I loved my mother. I used to visit back and forth, you know, with her, but the other two girls have never forgiven her. They never ever forgave mum for leaving them, and I mean today theyre grown women and theyve got children of their own, or grandchildren.
Frank Heimans: How did your mother feel about having left her children?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Ive always got on well with her, you know, because she used to come to the sewing classes in at the Aboriginal Medical Service when I used to teach sewing there in the sixties. She never used to talk about it much but I knew it hurt her that they wouldnt have anything to do with her, you know.
Frank Heimans: What happened to your mother?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Oh, mother died. She had Parkinsons Disease, and she was a big woman like me and she ended up being so little and frail and stooped over. Her name was Evelyn May Sue Ellen Walker, all those names, hey.
Frank Heimans: Now, you were a young woman yourself at this time, about 15 or 16, in Sydney, did you have any boyfriends?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Well, I had a boyfriend, Sam, my first boyfriend, and ended up getting pregnant to him. I had my first baby when I was 17 but I didnt want to bring shame on my father so I moved to Coonabarabran with Sam where I had Bill, my eldest, when I was 17. Then Pearl a year afterwards and then Dianne a year afterwards. So that was three children I had to Sam.
Frank Heimans: Can you describe your wedding to Sam? Did you have a wedding?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: No wedding, de facto relationship. I only married once and that was to Peter Langford.
Frank Heimans: So what was Sam like as a person?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: He was an arsehole. He was no good. He was a man that was a very brutal man, belted me up. I got sick of it in the end and I just left him. But he fathered my three first children.
Frank Heimans: Was he a handsome guy?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Oh, he was all right, always clean dressed and clean and well dressed. I never felt anything for him after a while because of the simple reason he was no help to the kids, to me with the kids, never showed affection for them. When I buried my two eldest within eight months of each other in 1969 and 70, he come just as they were putting Pearls body in the coffin, the hearse to go to the cemetery. Then with Bill in 1970, he didnt come until we had Bill buried, you know.
Frank Heimans: Can you tell me about the circumstances regarding Pearls and Bills death?
Ruby Langford Ginibi: Well, Pearl had just turned 17, on the 1st of December, and she was dead on the 20th, and that year was 1969. In 1968 she made history, being the first Aboriginal to ever dance with any Prime Minister in Australian history, and that was John Gorton at the time. She was walking along the street with a transistor in her hand and a towel over her shoulder, going from the swimming pool, and a taxi and a Kombi van had a collision and the van just hit her up against a brick wall, got up on the footpath and hit her into a brick wall and she went into a coma and died. We buried her the 24th of 1969. Bill, I found him drowned in about eight inches of water. Hed run enough water into the bathtub, through the old chip heater in those days, you know, to wash his trousers out, and he stooped over to wash the trousers - if there hadnt have been a plug in there hed have been all right but eight inches of water it took to drown him. I pumped him but he was already gone, my son, and he was my eldest, Bill.
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To cite this page: http://nla.gov.au/nla.oh-3966-0000-tr-cd