Victoria Archibald was eight when her mother placed her in the care of the Aborigines Protection Board [sic] due to her mother's ill health. Archibald's mother suffered from a lung condition that saw her hospitalised frequently. With no other family to care for her child, Archibald's mother surrendered her to the Board who sent her to Cootamundra Home.
At the Home, the emphasis was on training to be a domestic servant although some education was given. Archibald learned how to read and write, scrubbed floors, carried buckets of water for the Cootamundra staff baths and garden. Archibald was fifteen when she was sent out to work as a domestic for a family in Albury in 1930 and then later to another family in Moree. While she was twenty and working in Moree, Archibald learned that her mother was very ill and was given permission to visit her. This was only the second time Archibald had seen her mother since she was eight. Archibald spent two days with her mother before she passed away.
Archibald married Les Lang at the age of twenty-one. She moved to Boggabilla, New South Wales, and while there she met her brother for the first time. Her brother later introduced her to the rest of her older siblings she had never known.
During her second marriage, to an ex-serviceman named Dick, Archibald lived in Burnt Bridge, New South Wales. While there, Archibald was employed by the Welfare to help remove Indigenous children from their parents. Her eldest child was taken away from her and sent to Cootamundra Home, but Archibald was pleased that her daughter was given an education rather then trained to be a domestic like she was.
