Nancy Young's imprisonment on manslaughter charges in the 1960s moved a nation

At midnight Nancy Young wrapped her ill baby in a blanket and walked 2 kilometres through bushland to the local hospital. 

Warning: This story contains the names and images of Indigenous people who have died. It refers to offensive terms included for historical context of discrimination.

It was a freezing winter's night in the outback town of Cunnamulla, Queensland.

Ms Young, an Indigenous woman from the Yumba Reserve, waited 9 hours for a doctor to see her sick baby Evelyn.

Evelyn died two days later at just four months old.

Immediately after her death, the doctor contacted the police and an investigation into Evelyn's death ensued. 

Ms Young was later jailed by an all-white male jury for manslaughter — allegedly by neglect — of her baby daughter.

Months after her conviction, the ABC's Four Corners program travelled to Cunnamulla and produced Out of Sight Out of Mind, a report that highlighted the squalid conditions of the Yumba Reserve where Ms Young and her eight children lived.

This was 1968. Like many outback towns at the time, racism was deeply entrenched. It reflected broader attitudes that were prevalent across the country. 

First Nations people faced systemic discrimination and marginalisation. Many endured segregation in housing, education and employment opportunities.

From the outside, Cunnamulla looked like a prosperous outback town with some of the finest sheep and beef cattle in Queensland. But within there was an invisible line that divided the town based on the colour of people's skin.

The bottom camp, also known as Yumba Reserve, was nestled between the local cemetery and the town's sewerage outlet on the outskirts of town. 

The shanties were made of wood and scrap iron and housed about 150 Indigenous people and their families, according to the Four Corners program. Many had occupied the reserve since the 1930s.

"Mum was born in Mitchell and they bulldozed the camp there," Ms Young's eldest daughter, Rhonda Naggs, recalled.

'Wouldn't expect that in Australia'

More than half a century on, 7.30 visited Cunnamulla to talk to Ms Young's daughters. Their mother died six years ago.

They were born on Yumba Reserve but were taken away after their mother was convicted. They grew up in foster homes and orphanages across Queensland. 

The only memories they have of Yumba are what their mother told them years after they were reunited.

The homes at Yumba Reserve were no larger than an average garage, with no running water, no electricity and no sewerage. 

Margaret McArthy, who lived with Ms Young, told The Sydney Morning Herald in 1969 that four adults and 10 children occupied the tiny space. They slept on flax mattresses laid out on the dirt floor. 

Plagues of flies and mosquitoes caused by the nearby town's sewerage caused many illnesses, particularly amongst the children. Eye, nose and ear infections and intestinal diseases such as gastroenteritis and diarrhoea were rampant. 

The more serious illnesses at the reserve, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, produced an Aboriginal death rate three times higher than the Cunnamulla average.

To get fresh water, the Yumba women rolled barrels of it more than 90 metres from the only water supply. The nearby cemetery had a better water supply for the dead than those living at Yumba, according to the Four Corners program.

Only one of Ms Young's daughters had not seen the 1968 Four Corners program and she found the footage distressing.

"To think that Mum was there with us children," one of Ms Young's daughters, Sandra Turnbull, exclaimed.

"I know she did her best. But to live like that?

Children taken away

Ms Young's partner regularly squandered his irregular pay cheques, leaving her with just $6 a week to provide for herself and the children. 

"Nancy Young's crime was not the neglect of her child," a 23-year-old Geoffrey Robertson wrote in 1970. He successfully represented Ms Young in her court appeal and went on to become a renowned human rights barrister.

"It was all part of the working out of this primitive desire to reprimand 'the reserve' for flaunting its untaxed poverty and promiscuity in the faces of the sober citizenry of Cunnamulla." 

Ms Young's conviction caused widespread condemnation and significant interest from legal and medical fraternities.

The Crown's evidence was that she had failed to provide the necessities of life, in that she failed to provide adequate food and to seek proper medical attention. 

The medical evidence during the trial was contradictory from both the defence and the Crown. 

The Crown's evidence was that Ms Young would have seen Evelyn's deteriorating condition in the days prior to taking her to hospital. The defence's medical evidence was that Evelyn had died from scurvy — which Indigenous children were particularly prone to at that time.

Four Corners was instrumental in drawing attention to Ms Young's case. After the program highlighted the squalid conditions of Yumba Reserve there was a public outcry.

The Queensland Supreme Court quashed Ms Young's conviction and she was released in November 1969.

Although she was free, Ms Young had lost custody of her children. Her daughters said they were told that their mother did not want them or did not care. They also were unaware of each other's existence.

Sandra Turnbull told 7.30 the meeting with her siblings came as a surprise.

"We were more or less thrown in one room together. That's how we met. There was no warning or nothing," Sandra Turnbull said.

"We were sitting on one side of the room.

"And Linda and Joanna were sitting on the other side.

"We [were] just sizing each other up and down, saying, 'Who are they?'

"And mum walked out the kitchen real casual. 'Oh, they're your sisters.' We go, 'What?' And that's how we met."

'Mum wouldn't ever come back here'

It was another first when 7.30 interviewed the sisters together. They had not told each other of their experiences after they were taken away from Yumba. 

"I used to get into a lot of fights trying to get the anger out of me, saying, 'Oh, my mother didn't want me. She just threw me away.' I was told that is why I was in foster care," Sandra Turnbull said.

Joanna Turnbull remembers being bullied at school because of the colour of her skin.

"White people used to show up in my face and say, 'Look at you n******, look at you A***. You're not us. You're not white like us," she said. 

Yumba Reserve was bulldozed in 1975 after the residents were moved into government-owned houses in Cunnamulla.

Today there is nothing left at Yumba but debris.

This was the first time the sisters visited the reserve where they were born.

"I don't know how to describe it really," Sandra Turnbull said.

"Mum wouldn't ever come back here.

"She hated it.

"It was just bad memories for her."

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