Kevin Barron

Kevin Barron was born at the settlement, 135 kilometres north of Perth, in 1945 after his mother, Betty, was taken there from her home in the Gascoyne region because she was "a bit fair". Mr Barron grew up at Moore River after it changed from government hands to become a Methodist mission in 1951.

His memories are mostly positive, but his parents and others from previous generations carry scars from a much harsher time when it was a government-run settlement.

"Some called it home, some called it hell on Earth. It was that bad … the way they were treated," he says.

"They came down here. [The people] were forcibly removed from their own country. They never had a chance to go back to their own families to say goodbyes and be buried in their own country."