The Australian Women's Register

Monica Clare was born in 1924, at Dareel on the Mooni River, ten miles from Mungindi, on the Queensland side of the border. Her father was an Aboriginal shearer, and her mother, surnamed Scott, was English. The family roamed the upper Darling until Monica’s mother died in childbirth in c.1926. In 1931 Monica and her younger brother were taken by Child Welfare. They were first taken to ‘Yasmar’ Home, Haberfield, in Sydney, and then to Redmyre Road, Strathfield, where Monica learned domestic service. By 1932 the two children were fostered to Bill and Stella Woodbury who owned a farm near Spencer on the lower Hawkesbury River. During World War Two, Monica worked as a servant, in the W.D.&H.O. Wills cigarette factory, as a waitress at a Greek café, and in Peggy Page, a well-known Sydney dress factory. Her first marriage ending in divorce, Monica became interested in Labor politics. In 1956 she met Leslie Clare, a well-known secretary of several trade unions, and decided to move to Wollongong. Leslie was sympathetic to Aboriginal people and took her to various Aboriginal missions along the New South Wales coast. They married in 1960.
Monica was the Secretary of the Aborigines Committee of the South Coast at Wollongong during the 1960s and subsequently of an Aboriginal committee called the South Coast Illawarra Tribe, from 1968 to 1973. She worked tirelessly for the political and social equality of Aboriginal people, and their independence. She died suddenly on National Aborigines Day, 13 July 1973, before she could revise and rewrite the manuscript for her autobiographical book Karobran: The Story of an Aboriginal Girl which was published in 1978.