Lousy Little Sixpence
1983 film by Alec Morgan
Lousy Little Sixpence is a 1983 Australian documentary film about Australian history that details the early years of the Stolen Generations and the struggle of Aboriginal Australians against the Aboriginal Protection Board in the 1930s. The film's title references the amount of pocket money that Aboriginal children were to be paid for their forced labour, although few ever received it.
Overview
Lousy Little Sixpence begins with the testimonies of survivors of the Stolen Generations who were born in the early 1900s. Later, the film documents the work of Jack Patten and the Aborigines Progressive Association in the 1930s, and ends with the Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938, which marked 150 years of European settlement in Australia.
Production
Lousy Little Sixpence took three years to research and produce. In the early stages of production, the film's producers Alec Morgan and Gerry Bostock travelled through New South Wales and Victoria while receiving unemployment benefits, looking for information on the Stolen Generations to include such as newspaper articles, films and photographs.
The film screened for six weeks at Dendy cinemas in Sydney.
Restoration
The National Film and Sound Archive restored the film to digital quality in 2023. They also held an interview with director Alec Morgan about the film.
The public source identifies “Lousy Little Sixpence” as 1983 film by Alec Morgan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lousy, Little and Sixpence.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19363736. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1938 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lousy Little Sixpence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.