Bendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative worker and Barkandji elder Aunty Iris Bysouth organised the trip to be present at the apology so the survivors could directly hear and see Mr Morrison apologise.

“They suffered all that abuse in that arena and I think it’d be good to hear the apology direct from the government,” Aunty Iris said.

Read more: Scott Morrison to deliver national apology to child sex-abuse survivors

“These people have been injured really bad, they’ve got mental illness now, and they’ve got a lot of issues, and I think a lot of healing needs to take place now.”

Aunty Iris said an apology meant a lot, but she would like to see more recognition of what people had suffered, such as a monument in a park that would allow people to sit and reflect.

Bendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative health worker Uncle Charlie Knight will travel to Canberra with the group. 

A Ngarrindjeri man, he was taken from his parents aged just one and a half.

He and his brother were placed in Campbell House Farm School in South Australia, before being put into a series of foster homes.

He was told his parents were dead.

He later discovered he was one of the oldest of 17.

It’s the continuing effect of this trauma that has is driving him to go to the National Apology in Canberra.

“It had a great impact on me… you get told that your parents were deceased and the only sibling you had was your brother who grew up with you in these homes, I didn’t know I had any siblings at all,” Uncle Charlie said.

“I was very traumatised I’ve been to psychologists, I’ve been to psychiatrist, I’ve been to counsellors, and I’m still going to counsellors to this very day.”

Read more: 10 years after apology to stolen generations Bendigo reflects

An apology will be step forward for Indigenous people who had survived in institutions, but the trauma meant their journey continued, Uncle Charlie said.

“We lose our culture, and we lose our identity and we lose our dignity… we can never heal because the memories linger in our minds,“ he said.

“My journey isn't over and neither is anybody else’s journey over until such time as this government realises and understands better about all this trauma and this post traumatic stress that we suffer from.”

Mr Morrison will make the National Apology on October 22.

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