“I’d always shared everything with my identical twin. Right up until she killed herself,” she said.

Mrs Davis’ tale of loss and grief was one of many at the first ever Indigenous Grief and Loss Yarn Up at Worrigee House on Thursday.

Now 60, Mrs Davis lost her twin Suzanne at 40, when her skeletal remains were found 12 months after her death, which was ruled a suicide.

“I still feel a lot of sadness, I feel alone and I feel lost,” she said.

“I feel very cheated.”

Despite her anguish, Mrs Davis said she thought it important to share her story.

“My grandfather was Koori and he never called us [Mrs Davis and her twin] by name, he called us piccaninny,” Mrs Davis said.

“I thought it was because he couldn’t tell us apart, but I found out it means ‘children’. That meant a lot to us because he died when we were nine.

“I hope that my story might help others and also help me. It’s important that families know of their heritage.

“I’m working through it and I don’t know if I have sorted my grief out yet. Losing my twin was like losing my world.”

Mrs Davis still hopes to one day return to a cave in which she and Suzanne played as children where they grew up in the Ulladulla region.

“We’d come home black, covered in soot,” she said.

“Years later I found out it was an old Aboriginal bakehouse. I would love to go there again when I get stronger. I’d get the bracelets we left in there. Mine was red and [Suzanne’s] was yellow.”

Mrs Davis’s story is one of several in a booklet launched on Thursday called In our care into your hands: Aboriginal stories about approaching the end of life.

As well as the booklet launch, the grief yarn-up covered a number of issues throughout the day: social and emotional wellbeing, strategies for living with grief, stories from elders and more.

Clinical nurse consultant and speaker Steve Swan said there was clearly a lot of sadness and grief in the room of around 80 people.

“It’s a big thing for Aboriginal people to open their hearts,” he said.

“As far as I know this [yarn-up] hasn’t been done anywhere else as this kind of thing tends to be private. But this is looking at opening it up – it brings us together as people.”

Photos from this event appear on page 10.