Famous resident

Polly Farmer

Athletes Footballers 📍 Perth 📍 Australia

2 known residences on record

Residence 1

📍Sister Kate's Home, Queens Park, Perth, WA 6107, Australia

1937 – 1952

“I was a Noongar child, taken young to Sister Kate's home for children at Queens Park, in Perth's south-east — one of the Stolen Generations, raised apart from my mother. They nicknamed me Polly the Parrot because I never stopped talking. It was a hard place and a hard time, but I always said it gave me a chance to make something of myself. On its dusty grounds I found the one thing that was wholly mine: a football. I would kick it for hours, dreaming. Out of that institution and that dust came a boy who would grow into one of the greatest the game has ever seen.”

👍 LovedThe football that was wholly mine, and the mates who became my family on those grounds

👎 DislikedBeing taken from my mother and raised in an institution — the wound the Stolen Generations all carry

Map showing where Polly Farmer lived — Sister Kate's Home, Queens Park, Perth, WA 6107, Australia

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Polly Farmer's home at Sister Kate's Home, Queens Park, Perth, WA 6107, Australia

📍 Street view today

Sources: Wikipedia: Polly Farmer

Residence 2

📍Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia

1962 – 1967

“In 1962 I crossed the country to Geelong, to play in the VFL for the Cats — a long way from the dust of Sister Kate's. In that bayside Victorian town I changed the game itself: I made the handball an attacking weapon, read the play like no one before, and showed what a ruckman could be. Geelong took me in and I gave it everything. For an Aboriginal man of my generation to be cheered by a whole town was no small thing. From a children's home in Perth to a champion in Geelong — the ball carried me the whole way.”

👍 LovedBeing embraced by a whole football town, and changing the game I loved with the handball

👎 DislikedHow rare and hard-won that acceptance was for an Aboriginal man of my time