Domestic Service and Frontier Feminism: The Call for a Woman Visitor to "Half-Caste" Girls and Women in Domestic Service, Adelaide, 1925-1928

... A WOMAN OF CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE

Returning to Adelaide, Sexton attempted to assert his organization's authority, demanding that the WNPA provide a list of nominees from which the AFA could make its selection. To no avail; as WNPA secretary Stephens reminded him sharply, the WNPA members on the AFA had the right to nominate the first Visitor.120

It would be many more months before the state and federal governments finally reached agreement on the transfer of the Bungalow girls.121 In October 1926 the Home and Territories Minister's secretary directed that the nomination of official visitors was to be placed in the hands of the Advisory Councilof which Sexton was of course secretary-reminding Sexton that the WNPA was to nominate the first visitor, "who will be Mrs A. K. Goode," and asking that he advise the Minister "whether this can be arranged."122 That the government was so well disposed to honoring the WNPA's right to nominate the AFA appointed Visitor is not quite as remarkable as it may at first appear. Moving from indifference to concurrence that there should be some official oversight of the girls in service, the state and federal governments were happy to hand that responsibility over to the AFA, in the comforting knowledge that this experienced body, whose "friendly assistance" was valued by the federal Home and Territories Minister,123 controlled any appointed Visitor. In fact, Goode had apparently withdrawn her offer to take the appointment by the time it was made official; but by then Sexton had dispensed with the WNPA's said "right" altogether. Back in January, faced with the recalcitrant Stephens, Sexton simply changed the AFA's membership policy. McKay and Cooke lost their status as "representative" members-and so the basis of their right to nominate the first Visitor-henceforth being merely "personal" members.124

Faced now with the federal minister's declaration of support for the WNPA right of nomination, Sexton immediately wrote to Stott, forwarding Stott's reply to the South Australian Chief Protector Francis Garnett, who had made his official request for the Advisory Council's nomination.125 "This will fill a long felt need," Stott had written, "providing you are successful in procuring Ladies suitable for the work. Sincerely trust Mrs. McKay may not be appointed her arbitary [sic] overbearing views would be Likely to cause trouble between Employer & Employees... "126 One suspects Sexton had solicited Stott's opinion of McKay. In April 1926, McKay and Cooke had set up their own Aborigines Welfare Committee within the WNPA, Cooke formally extending the WNPA platform to "the furtherance of the welfare of Aboriginal women and children" at the 1926 annual WNPA meeting held in the mid-year.127 Although their focus was on Aboriginal women along the planned railway construction works in central Australia, they kept an eye on the progress of the Visitor question.128 Sexton may have had some reason to expect the WNPA to nominate McKay, as the convenor of this Aboriginal subcommittee, in the place of Goode.