Jay Creek is in the MacDonnell Ranges 45 kilometres west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. It was a government settlement for Indigenous Australians which for a time in the late 1920s and early '30s included 45 children from a home named 'The Bungalow' (37 of whom were under the age of 12) temporarily housed in a corrugated shed with a superintendent and matron housed separately in two tents.
Jay Creek was home to the Western Arrernte people. In 1937 Jay Creek was declared as one of three permanent camps or reserves for the Alice Springs Aboriginal population. It was intended a buffer between the semi-nomadic people living in far western regions and the more sophisticated inhabitants of Alice Springs and environs, in particular for the non-working, aged and infirm around Alice.
Famous quotes containing the words jay and/or creek:
“He hangs in the hall by his black cravat,
The ladies faint, and the children holler:
Only my Daddy could look like that,
And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar.”
—William Jay Smith (b. 1918)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)