NAA: A1, 1918/6158
Strectar, Elizabeth Ann
Digital copy - 36803
| Occupation as written | Domestic help |
| Standardised occupation | DS01: Domestic service - Indoor service |
| Application received | 10 Jul 1918 |
| Application status |
Approved |
| Official | EC |
| Date of approval or denial | 12 Jun 1918 |
| If rejected, why? | |
| Birthplace as written | Noumea, New Caledonia |
| Modern country | New Caledonia |
| Age on application | 56 |
| Age on arrival in Australia | 7 |
| Port of Departure | Fiji |
| Port of Arrival | Melbourne |
| Date of arrival | None |
| Name of ship | None |
| Address in Australia | Sanguka Kooyong Road, Caulfield |
| Address State | Victoria |
| Time at address | |
| Name of reference | Frederick Bingham Rogers Lockwood |
| Occupation of reference | Teacher of State School (Victoria) |
| Marginalia description | p.1 'French' |
| Police report attached | Yes |
| Link to other applicant | |
| Literate | Yes |
| Reason | Pension |
| Other information | |
French, 56, single, resident in Australia for 51 years. Memorandum, Home & Territories Department, 7 May 1918, p.10: ‘She called at the Department: applicant is a coloured woman… father was an American, and her mother was the daughter of a chief at Lifou, Loyalty Islands. Her parents reached Noumea and applicant was born there.’ Wants Old Age Pension. ‘Submitted as to whether colour is to be a bar to naturalisation in this case. Attention is invited to the long residence of Miss Streeter and the good character she bears.’ Signed at the bottom also by A.H. and by the minister (17/5/18), with the minister writing ‘special circumstances Approved’. Approved by executive, 12/6/1918. See her fascinating letter about her father’s shipwreck and meeting her mother, p.20 (father was an officer on a sailing ship 'which was wrecked in the year 1861'. Crashed on Lifou, Loyalty Island, near Noumea, 'all lives were lost but Father and he was washed ashore the black on the Island of mere savages and Father nearly lost his life by these black natives savages. Only for my Mother who was the chiefs Daughter' The bit about chief's daughter is underlined by someone else. 'My mother hiding my Father from those savages some how they mange to get to Noumea' in 1862; she was born in 1862. 'You will understand that these people were not Civilised in those day'; implication is that possibly not married. From her uncle in Washington, her father's brother. - RACE
states French mother and American father.