A Secret Country
Page 38
During the early 1980s significant changes began to take place in the lives of New Zealanders. People began to declare their homes ‘nuclear free’. Churches and schools followed, then whole streets and local councils. Derided as trivial by some members of New Zealand’s peace movement, the trend soon became a national act of faith. People said they were taking charge of their lives and reclaiming their future; and the strength of their feeling led to Government policy banning nuclear-armed ships, indeed all things nuclear from New Zealand and its waters. What was unique about this was that it became, in effect, a bi-partisan policy. As Mary-Louise O’Callaghan has pointed out, ‘To be anti-nuclear in New Zealand is not to be cast as a radical, but as a patriot.’35
‘A great power protects itself’, wrote the Australian historian Gavan McCormack, ‘by securing allies that may be sacrificed when necessary to gain some advantage or provide intermediate targets (and so make war “winnable”) without inviting an all-out attack on its own territory.’36 What remains exciting about New Zealand is that the subtlety of this argument is understood by a broad band of the population, and that endless debate about the efficacy of nuclear deterrence was long ago replaced by national and rational self-interest.
In Washington New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stand used to be known as the ‘New Zealand disease’. Sceptics who regarded the New Zealand precedent as hopelessly idealistic and of little consequence now might note that much of the world has since caught this ‘disease’. President Bush’s announcement in 1991 that US ships will no longer carry nuclear arms in vindication of the campaigning of New Zealand’s peace and environmental groups, and the stand of the government of David Lange. Neither has the commitment faded; and the apparent eagerness of the present New Zealand government to amend the anti-nuclear legislation may turn out to be its undoing.
Worrying symptoms of the New Zealand disease have long appeared in Australia; and today the energy, optimism and idealism of so many Australians – qualities which excite outsiders – ought not to be politically disaffected. The description ‘lucky country’ ought not to be ironic. Among young Australians there is little of the sterile, one-dimensional conservatism that marks so many of the dullards in power, who are products of the Menzies years of the Great Australian Silence. Instead, I detect a hunger for movements of change that accurately reflect the social, racial and sexual complexion of an extraordinary society. One has only to look to the overwhelming support among the young for Aboriginal land rights and for a whole range of politically independent groups.
For many of these Australians it is an entirely feasible proposition that, united with New Zealand and the other Pacific nations, Australia would add a compelling voice of sanity in its vast region, one that no intruding power could ignore. This would then become the ‘Australasian disease’ and in all likelihood lead to the creation of other nuclear-free zones, in which all nuclear weapons testing – still the scourge of the Pacific, its people and environment – would be banned. Perhaps these developments could be the beginning of a morally-based way of dealing with international problems that would not only continue the dismantling of the enmities of the old Cold War, but provide the next stage of mobilising people against the refurbished imperialism of the so-called ‘new world order’. This is not a fanciful ‘dream’. The process has been started by the entirely pragmatic initiatives of Mikhail Gorbachev. Now it could be the turn of ‘small big’ countries, like Australia. A truism is that people are never still, and only political will is required. At the very least we Australians would begin to break free from our imperial past; and for us, like everyone, breaking free is the only future,
1. Father and sons among Aboriginal soldiers who fought in the Second World War. From Left: Con and Ron Edwards, Cyril and James Scott
2. Eddie Murray, who was killed in police custody, Wee Waa, 1981
3. Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira, fêted by Melbourne ‘society’ 1951, gaoled and died, 1959
4. Joyce Hall, Northern Territory, 1982
5. Alice Springs, 1987
6. Freda Glynn, chairperson of Imparja Television, Alice Springs, owned by Aboriginal Australians
7. Clara Inkamala explains how to catch and cook a goanna
8. China in Australia: Denis O’Hoy, right, with his brothers and sisters, Bendigo, 1946
9. Denis in 1987, overseen by his grandparents
10. The wedding of Maria and Carlo Calcagno, Sicily, 1954 – with the groom missing. Carlo was represented by his brother-in-law and in a picture on the cake
11. The couple on the day Maria landed in Sydney in 1955
12. The Atlas football team, Sydney, 1940. The players all originate from the Greek island of Castellorizia, whose people have emigrated to Australia since 1916
13. Tom Stratton, immigration officer, with Greek ‘New Australians’, Athens, 1958
14. The author’s parents: five-year-old Elsie Marheine, later Elsie Pilger, in the middle of her two sisters, Kurri Kurri, 1907
15. Claude Pilger, Sydney, 1947
16. Valentina Makeev, a ‘displaced person’, and her pet kangaroo Richard, Snowy Mountains, 1940s
17. ‘The Basher Gang’ used by the New South Wales Government in the 1930s to break the coal miners’ strikes
18. The miners’ last stand at Rothbury colliery, 1929
19. Prime Minister Robert Menzies, the ‘Queen’s man’, dominated conservative politics for a generation. In the 1950s Menzies allowed the British Government to drop atomic bombs on South Australia, where the land remains lifeless and highly contaminated
20. A symbol of all that remains at the Maralinga test site, 1987
21. Vietnam veterans’ ‘welcome home’ parade, Sydney, 1987
22. Prime Minister Harold Holt welcomes President Lyndon Johnson to Australia, 1966
23. Brian Day in the late 1950s
24. With fellow Vietnam veteran and ‘Agent Orange’ victim Barry Wright, Blue Mountains, 1987
25. American Christopher Boyce, convicted of espionage in 1977, described CIA operations in Australia aimed at bringing down the Whitlam Government
26. The Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, who used his ‘reserve powers’ to dismiss the Whitlam Government in 1975
27-29. Top: Bondy with Bob Hawke (the Silver Bodgie)
Middle: Alan Bond (Bondy) with Neville Wran (Nifty)
Bottom: Hawke with Kerry Packer (the Goanna)
30. Sir Peter Abeles, owner of trucks, ships and airlines
31. Tom Domican (‘The Enforcer’)
32. Paul Keating, Australian Treasurer
33.
34.
35. Mates. US Secretary of State George Shultz and Bob Hawke, 1987
36. The top-secret American base at Nurrungar, South Australia, where ‘Star Wars’ is developed
37. Jack Platt, the Bondi Beach shark catcher, 1952
38. An Australian icon: ‘The Sunbaker’ by Max Dupain
39. Bronte Beach, Sydney 1985
40. Thelma Thompson, nurse, Broken Hill, 1920
41. Harry King, wheat farmer, Mollerin, 1987
42. Working at home on poverty rates, Melbourne 1987
43. King’s Cross, Sydney, 1986
44. The ‘new surburbia’, western Sydney, 1987
45. The ‘new surburbia’, western Sydney, 1987
46. John Pilger with the parrot that won’t drink Bondy’s XXXX beer, Silverton, 1986
47. With Sam Pilger, Ayers Rock, 1987
NOTES
Chapter One
ON THE BEACH
1 Cited in Meg Stewart, Bondi (James Fraser, Sydney, 1984), p. 39.
2 Sun (October 11, 1958), cited in ibid.
3 ‘Beachstuck on Bondi’, ibid., p. 28.
4 Ian Moffit, Sydney Morning Herald (July 7, 1972).
5 Stewart, Bondi, p. 14.
6 Ibid., p. 32.
7 Ibid., p. 82.
Chapter Two
A WHISPERING IN OUR HEARTS
&nbs
p; 1 Russel Ward, Man Makes History: World History from the Earliest Times to the Renaissance – for Boys and Girls in the First Year of Secondary School Courses (Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1952), p. 9, cited by Bill Cope in research notes, 1987.
2 The Australian School Atlas (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1939), pp. vii, 51–62, cited by Cope.
3 Cited by Andrée Wright in Australian Racism: One People, One Prejudice, research for Island of Dreams, Channel 7, Sydney, 1981.
4 Triumph in the Tropics, p. 179, cited in Ross Fitzgerald, A History of Queensland from 1915 to the 1980s (University of Queensland Press, 1984), p. 552.
5 Cited in Jan Roberts, Massacres to Mining – the Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia (Dove Communications, Melbourne, 1981), p. 68.
6 See Peter Conrad, ‘A Treasure-house of Godzone Lingo’, Observer (March 19, 1989).
7 For part of this information I am indebted to Dr Rhys Jones (Sydney Morning Herald, July 30 and August 1, 1988) and the Information Department of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The fragment of a human skull, believed to be 60,000 years old, was found in Lake Eyre in May 1988 (Sydney Morning Herald, November 10, 1988).
8 This ‘silence’ was broken in large part by the publication in 1969 of D. J. Mulvaney’s landmark work, The Prehistory of Australia (Thames & Hudson, London, 1969).
9 D. Gillespie, The Rock Art Sites of Kakadu National Park – Some Preliminary Research Findings for their Conservation and Management, Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service Special Publications 10 (1983), pp. 3–5.
10 Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (James Cook University of North Queensland, 1981), p. 163.
11 Sydney Morning Herald (July 23, 1988).
12 Keith D. Suter and Kaye Stearman, Aboriginal Australians, Minority Rights Group, Report no. 35 (London, July 1988), p. 5.
13 Keith Willy, When the Sky Fell Down: the Destruction of the Tribes of the Sydney Region, 1788–1850s (Collins, Sydney, 1979), cited in Roberts, Massacres to Mining, p. 14. I am indebted to Jan Roberts for her research and insights.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Cited in ibid., p. 16.
17 Fergus Robinson and Barry York, The Black Resistance (Widescope, Camberwell [Victoria], 1977), cited in ibid.
18 Sydney Monitor (December 24, 1838).
19 Exploitation and Extermination: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland (ANZ Books, Sydney, 1935), p. 49, cited in Roberts, Massacres to Mining, p. 21.
20 Raymond Evans, ‘“The Owl and the Eagle”: the Significance of Race in Colonial Queensland’, Social Alternatives, vol. 5, no. 4 (1986).
21 Ibid.
22 Sydney Morning Herald (January 3, 1987).
23 A Demographic Survey of the Aboriginal Population of the Northern Territory, Occasional Paper No. 1 (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1963).
24 For information about Namatjira’s life, I am indebted to the authors of Albert Namatjira, the Life and Work of an Australian Painter, ed. Nadine Amadio (Macmillan, Australia, 1986).
25 Tribune (December 4, 1985); Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, a report on Australian Aborigines by the Anti-Slavery Society (London, June 1987), p. 2; Henry Reynolds, article in Times on Sunday (January 16, 1988).
26 Frank Hardy, The Unlucky Australians (Nelarn, Melbourne, 1968).
27 This summary of the Woodward report is from Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, pp. 17, 18.
28 Sydney Morning Herald (May 10, 1986).
29 This summary of the Land Rights Act is from Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, pp. 18, 19.
30 Courier-Mail Brisbane (April 19, 1983).
31 Guardian (February 24, 1982).
32 See Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, p. 34.
33 Sydney Morning Herald (March 30, 1985).
34 Australian Society (May 1986).
35 Ibid.
36 National Times (March 29–April 4, 1985).
37 National Times, letter from Sylvia Lawson and others (April 4, 1986).
38 Australian Society (May 1986).
39 Ibid.
40 Cited in Harry Gordon, An Eyewitness History of Australia (John Currey, O’Neil, Melbourne, 1976), p. 43.
41 Ibid., p. 44.
42 Bingara Advocate (January 20, 1965).
43 Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, p. 11.
44 N. S. Kirkman, The Palmer River Gold Fields, 1873–1883, B.A. Hons thesis (James Cook University of North Queensland, 1981).
45 Estimate by Justice James Muirhead, Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody: ‘Down Under and Dying’, World in Action, Granada Television, Britain, December 12, 1988.
46 Estimate by Dr Edgar Freed, former psychiatrist-in-charge at Bargwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa; Sydney Morning Herald (August 31, 1987). See also ‘Down Under and Dying’, World in Action.
47 Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, pp. 51, 53.
48 Ibid., p. 53.
49 David Wilson, ‘Australia’s Death Cells’, Good Weekend, supplement to Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age (November 19, 1988).
50 Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, p. 63.
51 Interviewed by the author, Sydney, June 1987.
52 Sydney Morning Herald (March 10, 1988).
53 Summarised in a letter from Attorney-General Terry Sheahan, May 26, 1986.
54 Interviewed by the author, Sydney, June 1987.
55 Interviewed by Tony Hewett, Sydney Morning Herald (November 7, 1987).
56 Interviewed by the author. See also Sydney Morning Herald (August 12, 1988).
57 Reporting by Tony Hewett and Michael Cordell, Sydney Morning Herald (August 10 and 17, 1987).
58 Sydney Morning Herald (May 10, 1991).
59 Daily Telegraph Mirror (May 10, 1991).
60 Sydney Morning Herald (May 8, 1991).
61 Australia News (May 31, 1991), Australia House, London.
62 Sydney Morning Herald (October 18, 1991).
63 Sydney Morning Herald (May 8, 1991).
64 Sydney Morning Herald (November 19, 1988).
65 Suter and Stearman, Aboriginal Australians, p. 4. I am indebted to the authors of Aboriginal Australians for their analysis of Aboriginal differences.
66 Sydney Morning Herald (May 19, 1985).
67 Interviewed by the author, Alice Springs, June 1987.
68 Interviewed by the author, Worowa, February 1987.
69 Cited in the documentary film Lousy Little Sixpence, directed by Alec Morgan.
70 Cited in a discussion guide for Lousy Little Sixpence, by Chikka Dixon.
71 Sydney Morning Herald (November 3, 1988).
72 Interviewed by the author, October 1986, and correspondence November 1988.
73 Kevin Gilbert, Because a White Man’ll Never Do It (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973).
74 Sydney Morning Herald (December 21, 1988).
75 Cited in Times on Sunday (October 18, 1987).
76 Sydney Morning Herald (April 23, 1986).
77 I am indebted to Lyndall Crisp for her reporting and analysis of Imparja’s prospects; Times on Sunday (October 18, 1987).
78 Leo Schofield, Sydney Morning Herald (January 27, 1988).
79 Times on Sunday (January 24, 1988). I am indebted to Sarah Walls for her fine article on ‘freedom rides’ to Sydney.
80 Ibid.
81 Cinesound/Movietone archives, Australia.
82 Cited by Martin Thomas in the Age, monthly review (December/January 1987/1988).
83 Ibid.
84 Sydney Morning Herald (January 27, 1988).
85 Land and Justice: Aborigines Today, pp. 90, 91.
86 Sydney Morning Herald (August 5, 1988).
87 See Michael Barnard, Northern Territory News (February 13, 1988); Hamish McDonald, Far Eastern Economic Review (March 10, 1988).
88 Sydney Morning Herald (February 25, 1987).
89 Illawarra Mercury (October 31, 1987).
90 Sydney Morning He
rald (February 27, 1988).
91 Ibid. (March 3 and 9, 1988).
92 Interviewed by the author, Alice Springs, June 1987.
93 Sydney Morning Herald (June 10, 1987).
94 Independent (December 21, 1991).
Chapter Three
HEROES UNSUNG
1 David Day, The Great Betrayal: Britain, Australia and the Onset of the Pacific War (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1988).
2 Jeremy Bentham, Panoptican Versus New South Wales, p. 7, cited in Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (Collins Granville, London, 1987), p. 2.
3 Edmund Burke, cited by Hughes, The Fatal Shore, p. 19.