As she began uncovering the story of the site, she was also confronting her own experiences and trying to ensure that the voices of other former residents were heard.

I was really at that point with just trying to find someone to help because really I had no, I had never run an organisation, established an organisation.

I had no way of knowing what to do and all that sort of thing.

But I had heard from a friend who'd had contact with Paul, Pauline particularly, and said, look, they might be able to help you.

So I did.

Paragols for me is a public journey and it's a personal journey and it always slides between those two things and that makes it difficult sometimes explaining things because as I was unravelling and discovering my own history and connection to the site and dealing with all the trauma of the past and all that, I was also this sort of public figure, you know, trying to represent others in that.

So it was really, really difficult.

What she had once understood simply as the history of a girls' institution became part of a much longer narrative about the regulation and control of women's lives, stretching back to the earliest colonial period in Australia.