The Cherry Picker's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir

$24.95

Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

Essential reading for everyone, especially in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter

This second edition of The Cherry Picker’s Daughter is an exquisite portrait of growing up Aboriginal on the fringes of outback towns in NSW in the mid-twentieth century. It’s a poignant insight into the Aboriginal experience in Australian history, as we are shown the extraordinary strength, resilience and ingenuity of Aboriginal families to overcome extreme poverty, persecution, racism and cultural genocide.

The strength of family ties in Aboriginal communities is clearly evident when three-month-old Kerry and her brother lost both parents. Her father, Kevin Gilbert––later to become a famous activist and artist––was jailed for many years and her father’s sister, whom she always called ‘Mummy’, raised Kerry and her brother, along with her own children and others within the extended family. The book is a tribute to this truly remarkable woman, who not only loved them selflessly and worked tirelessly to support them, but also managed to keep them from being taken/‘stolen’ by the ‘Welfare’.

Told in the child’s voice and in the vernacular of her Mob, activist, artist, poet and author, Aunty Kerry, tells her story of love and loss, of dispossession and repeated dislocation growing up in corrugated tin huts, tents and run-down train carriages, of helping her family earn ‘an honest living’ through fruit picking, and the impact of life as an Aboriginal state ward living under the terror of Protection Laws. It is a timely and significant contribution to our indigenous literature.

Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

Essential reading for everyone, especially in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter

This second edition of The Cherry Picker’s Daughter is an exquisite portrait of growing up Aboriginal on the fringes of outback towns in NSW in the mid-twentieth century. It’s a poignant insight into the Aboriginal experience in Australian history, as we are shown the extraordinary strength, resilience and ingenuity of Aboriginal families to overcome extreme poverty, persecution, racism and cultural genocide.

The strength of family ties in Aboriginal communities is clearly evident when three-month-old Kerry and her brother lost both parents. Her father, Kevin Gilbert––later to become a famous activist and artist––was jailed for many years and her father’s sister, whom she always called ‘Mummy’, raised Kerry and her brother, along with her own children and others within the extended family. The book is a tribute to this truly remarkable woman, who not only loved them selflessly and worked tirelessly to support them, but also managed to keep them from being taken/‘stolen’ by the ‘Welfare’.

Told in the child’s voice and in the vernacular of her Mob, activist, artist, poet and author, Aunty Kerry, tells her story of love and loss, of dispossession and repeated dislocation growing up in corrugated tin huts, tents and run-down train carriages, of helping her family earn ‘an honest living’ through fruit picking, and the impact of life as an Aboriginal state ward living under the terror of Protection Laws. It is a timely and significant contribution to our indigenous literature.

  • 2020 | 9781925893311 | 192 pages | Paperback | 210 x 135 mm | Memoir

  • First Nations stories, childhood, indigenous, aboriginal communities, family, relationships, communities, memoir, art, education, Wiradjuri people, woman

  • 9781925893311

Praise for The Cherry Picker’s Daughter

‘... the voice of a much-loved Elder, a woman who could yarn like nobody else. Kerry was fierce, loving, brave, passionate, whip-smart, funny and she knew better than anyone that it’s our families that sustain us and make us who we are, for better or for worse ... She was an amazing and powerful person; this extraordinary memoir, The Cherry Pickers Daughter, goes some way to explaining who Aunty Kerry was, and how she came to be the deadly Wiradjuri woman we were lucky to call an Elder.’

— Melissa Lucashenko, multiple award-winning author

‘Australia has waited too long to read this book of courage and truth. It heralds a timely change in our thinking on Aboriginal activism.’

––Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri writer and academic

‘Thank you, Kerry, for sharing your story – so much pain and hurt, but such life-affirming strength and love too.’

— Kate Grenville, award-winning author

‘Kids bounce into this world with such capacity for hope and love and attachment; how painful it was to read the ways this was betrayed by an Australia that I wish had known better. This memoir felt important in my hands, historical, vital––and joyful. It described a childhood I needed to know, and filled me with deepest admiration and respect. I cried many tears for Kerry Reed-Gilbert and was so grateful for her wonderful Mummy.’

—Sophie Laguna, award-winning author

‘An unflinching memoir of courage and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds by a remarkable Wiradjuri woman, that speaks to her spirit and strength, and to the love and courage of the woman who raised her. An important book for all Australians.’

— Joy Rhoades, author

‘Spilling the beans is the domain of the writer, and few people have more beans to spill than Kerry Reed-Gilbert.’

— Jared Thomas, writer

‘If you were touched by Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, you’ll treasure this book … Everyone should read this, and ponder how we unjustly trap people within our judgements. You may cry though…’

— Robert O’Hearn, non-fiction buyer, Booktopia


This second edition of The Cherry Picker's Daughter is an exquisite portrait of growing up Aboriginal on the fringes of outback towns in NSW in the mid-twentieth century. Its an important book for school libraries and classrooms, with profound insights into the extraordinary strength, resilience and ingenuity of Aboriginal families to overcome extreme poverty, persecution, racism and cultural genocide.

“A book all Australians should read - Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s life speaks to the history and reality of life for Wiradjuri people in central NSW.”
— Anita Heiss, Wiradjuri woman and author
Image of Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

A Wiradjuri woman from Central New South Wales, Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert was the inaugural Chairperson of the First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN) and continued as a patron until her death 2019, just before The Cherry Picker’s Daughter was released. Read more.