Snake Dancing

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Snake Dancing Page 12

by Roberta Sykes


  We became friends. He accompanied me to the Mosman home of Mrs Barrie Ovenden, who was then the editor of a publication funded by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Identity. We all sat around and talked politics. We also visited the zoo as he wanted to see some of the unique Australian animals—koalas and kangaroos—which he had heard about.

  I told Charles about the strange events that had been happening since I had made contact with the Black movement in Sydney. His work was in reconnaissance, so the things I was describing made sense to him where they had made none to me. Because I was new on the scene, he said, I was attracting the attention of secret service organisations, such as ASIO. They didn’t need to dog people so thoroughly if they already knew them, because after a while they could almost predict their whereabouts and likely reactions at any given time or event. But with someone new, they needed to find out as much as possible about the person, their habits, their potential for violence, and so on.

  His explanation made sense, and I was comforted by it, although I still didn’t like what was happening.

  Charles was a very sensitive person and he soon picked up on how nervously I flinched from any gesture of affection. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked me many times. Towards the end of his brief R&R leave I felt he deserved some explanation for the rigidity and quick wall of coldness he met when he extended even ordinary courtesies, such as taking my arm protectively to cross the street. We had shared a lot during his visit; he had talked about many of his concerns regarding the situation of racism in both the USA and Vietnam, and I had tested on him some of the ideas I was developing about how things should progress here.

  So, I found myself telling Charles of my fear of men, of their intentions, and of the gang-rape from which my fears stemmed. He was kind and solicitous, as I had intuitively known he would be, and we made a pact that he would share this knowledge with no one. When he left to return to the war, and later to his wife and family in America, I felt extremely alone. I had known very few people to whom I felt sufficiently close or trusted enough to share my awful secret. I had found a security in telling someone outside of my everyday life, a safety in the knowledge that Charles would never be able to use the information against me. It was critically important that no one could drop a careless word in conversation anywhere near my son, something Charles would never be in a position to do. After he left we corresponded for several years.

  At around this time I learned from other Blacks that they were being harassed by ASIO and by the police. Some of the emerging leaders were being picked up and charged with morals offences. I became alarmed, and on a few occasions, when detectives stopped and questioned me for no apparent reason, I would be very short and direct with them in response.

  ‘Is it your intention to arrest me?’ I would ask. ‘If so, on what charge? And if not, leave me alone.’

  People in the movement were preparing to go to Canberra for what they told me was the People’s Parliament. They invited me to be one of the speakers. I had no idea what to expect and had never been to Canberra, but the current was running in that direction and these colleagues were offering transport. In order to accept I would have to throw in my job, but that seemed no great sacrifice. Scraping plates had kept me from participating in the day to day work of the movement. It was time to move on.

  I remember little of what happened during that time in Canberra. It was warm and sunny. I was impressed with the organisation and camaraderie displayed throughout the day, and very nervous about speaking in front of so many people. When my name was called to come to the platform, which had been erected on the lawns outside Parliament House, my legs were shaking so much that I could barely walk. After I gave my speech, without notes but on ideas that I had thought a lot about, I received hearty applause and was warmly congratulated. I was surprised anyone had even heard me because my knees had made such a racket, knocking together the whole time.

  But this was it, the day of my declaration. I had stood up to be counted amongst those people who wished to change society. I had spoken up against racism and demanded an end to this evil. If ASIO officers were to follow me now, I thought, they might think they had good reason.

  Instead of travelling back to Sydney, I organised a lift to Melbourne. I was offered accommodation in a summer house behind a big house in Murrumbeena occupied by several lectures from Monash University. However, it eventuated that they never did clear the junk out of it and I was obliged to live in the house. I had no income and in return for sharing their food, I cooked and waged war against the grime they had allowed to accumulate in the lounge, bathroom and kitchen, setting traps to catch the mice which threatened to infest their larder.

  Neal Barrett, a lecturer in economics who shared the house, had quite a political mind. Certainly he knew a great deal about politics and was happy to share that information with me. I had not previously heard many of the expressions that were part of everyday conversation in the south, or so it seemed to me. The terms ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ confused me; I knew they were descriptive of something but was unable to sort out just what. Neal enlightened me.

  How politically naive I was during those early days. I used my leisure time wisely, reading almost everything I could find in their house, though the dense tomes on economic theory defied me.

  One day I was surprised and delighted to receive a letter from Cheryl Buchanan, whom I had met in Brisbane at the offices of the National Tribal Council. She asked me to contact a man, Ian Sturzaker, who had promised to give the Gurindji People a truck. I was to find out what progress had been made in this regard. Her letter ended with a cryptic sentence: ‘We all thought you were very brave when you were talking to Denis.’

  I was later to learn that a woman had chipped Denis for swearing and, by way of response, he had assaulted her. She’d been taken to the hospital and given stitches. The very next night I had come in to the headquarters and done the same thing, even stretching my luck to insist that Denis not strike his foot out towards the child playing on the floor. This explained the silence that had fallen over the room after I had spoken. Had I known about the earlier event, I’m not sure that I would have been so quick to speak. It’s easy to be brave when you don’t realise you are in any danger.

  I paid a call on Ian Sturzaker; he was a merchant banker with a neat office off a laneway in the heart of Melbourne. Ian was pleased to see me and told me a remarkable story. He had read in the newspapers about the Gurindji strike on Wave Hill which, by that time, had been going for many years. In 1966 the Gurindji had moved to Wattie Creek, where they were trying to establish themselves. They needed a truck to enable them to fetch supplies and to get to work erecting a fence around the area that they were demanding be excised for them, with fencing supplied by supportive trade union members.

  Ian had been struck by the courage of these Aboriginal people, by their determination to stick to their demands against all comers. He had written to say he would organise a truck for them. He’d planned to ask a few people in his social and economic circles to throw in a thousand dollars each; thirty or forty people ought to have done, he thought. It was money none of them would really miss. But when the time came for him to shake the tin and ask his mates, he became shy. So, having made the commitment, he had purchased the truck himself.

  He explained this with an air of great embarrassment, then turned the conversation to me. Who was I and what was I doing? As he had been frank and open with me, I told him I had come south with the intention of being a writer, but that my plans weren’t panning out.

  ‘Can you write?’ he asked me with a directness I found quite unnerving.

  ‘Yes. I’m a good writer. I just haven’t been able to get anything published,’ I replied.

  He mused for a moment, then picked up the phone. ‘Have you heard of The Review?’ he asked. I had. ‘Well, the editor, Richard, owes me a favour. I’ll get him to have a look at your work.’

  He rang Richard Walsh who, on that day, wa
s in Sydney. When would he be back in Melbourne? Lunch on Thursday? Friday? Which day, he asked, would be good for me?

  And so it was that I met Richard Walsh and he made a commitment to Ian to look at my work. Throughout the meal they talked of people and things about which I knew nothing, so I was quite bored. Only at the end, as the table was being cleared, did they turn their attention to me. ‘Send three pieces over to the office,’ said Richard, ‘and I’ll have a look at them.’

  On the next working day I brought in the three articles, searching out the address on the map I carried with me everywhere, and left them with the receptionist, then went home to wait.

  I heard nothing that week, nor the following week, and was becoming disheartened. However, two weekends later, The Review came out and one of my articles was in it. I was beside myself with happiness.

  I expected to hear something from the paper, but no one contacted me. The following weekend’s paper carried a second article, after which I received a phone call.

  ‘I’m calling from The Review. Have you got your column ready yet?’ a male voice, not Richard, asked. ‘And we want to talk about getting a block made for your name.’

  I was on my way, I thought excitedly. I rang Ian to thank him, and was invited out to dinner to celebrate.

  Around this same time I had been hearing and reading about a police chase that was underway in Western Australia. A forty-year-old Aboriginal man, Lionel Brockman, his wife, Jean, aged thirty-five, and their eleven children—the oldest, Reg, was aged eighteen—were being pursued across the desert and, according to the newspapers, were leading police on a merry chase.

  As I sought out more information, I became appalled by the terrible unfairness of this situation. The state authorities were spending more money chasing this man and his family than Brockman’s crimes warranted. He was wanted only for a series of minor thefts. I carefully scanned everything about the story, because I did not want to find myself inadvertently supporting a criminal with some violent charge against him which hadn’t been made public. However, once I learned that he had no prior record I felt moved to do something to help him. But what?

  Neal and the other men in the house were helpful with suggestions. Lionel Brockman would need money, they told me, to help meet the costs of his defence once he was caught. Many people had already read about the case and I could sense a wave of public sympathy for him, so I began to go around to union offices to inquire if they would assist. I also organised a central place that people could contact or through which anyone who felt similarly moved could channel funds to the Brockmans.

  The Lionel Brockman Defence Fund was born, and soon even a demonstration had been planned. There was no way to contact Mr Brockman to let him know how much support there was for him. However, at our demonstration an effigy of the WA Premier was burned and that made news even in Perth.

  I had only one pair of shoes, boots they were, and at this time they wore out. They were seven years old. My only income was the small payments I received from my articles in The Review, which I spent on food and other basic necessities. So, when I went looking for shoes to replace my old ones, I found them to be far beyond my resources. A friend suggested I should look in an Army disposal store, where they sold very cheap sturdy boots. I was pleased to find a pair which fitted me, though they were thick-soled and military-looking.

  Hence I came to be wearing these boots at the Lionel Brockman support demonstration, and photos of me so attired were flashed to newspapers around the country. I was gaining a reputation for militancy, I felt, based, to some extent, on my footwear.

  I cadged lifts and travelled around, attending conferences, speaking to groups and raising public awareness. During a conference in Canberra people were asked to participate in a ‘Free Angela Davis’ demonstration outside the US Embassy. (Angela Davis, a Black American, was being held in isolation in a US prison, charged with, and later acquitted of, kidnap and murder.) I attended along with everyone else, and a photographer, no doubt attracted by my afro hairstyle, snapped my picture as I held up a placard. This photo was published on the cover of Tribune, the Communist Party newspaper, leading many people to believe, erroneously, that I was a member of the Communist Party.

  Around the same time, Denis Walker and others were in the process of setting up a group called the Australian Black Panther Party, modelled on the American Panthers whose militancy had dominated much of the television coverage from the US. As I had little to do with this, I don’t know if Denis’ group had an affiliation with its namesake or just adopted the name from the material the members were reading, although I suspect the latter. This development, which was trumpeted by the local media around the personae of Denis, Gary Foley and Billy Craigie, created a great deal of fear in the white community, and caused just about anyone involved in the struggle to be regarded as ‘Black Power’.

  As I supported the philosophy of liberation by whatever means necessary, I did not divorce myself from the politics of Black Power, and I explained my understanding of this philosophy later in a published debate, ‘Black Power in Australia’, with the then Senator, Neville Bonner. Even Neville, in his counter-argument, wrote that there was ‘good Black Power’ and ‘bad Black Power’, and that he was for the former, demonstrating the difficulty which people had in allocating specific meaning to the concept.

  My housemates in Melbourne began to report interference with the phone, and again I often felt that I was being followed. We would see men sitting in cars on the street outside the house. One rainy day we were sitting in the lounge, one of the housemates was playing the piano, when another who was looking out a window spied a man in a raincoat standing just outside the room. The house was set well back from the street and was almost completely concealed by a tall hedge right across the front, so no one would have been standing there by accident. One of the guys said the man was soaked through and looked miserable, and he thought he would invite him in for a cup of tea. When he opened the door, the raincoated man ran up the driveway, and shortly we heard a car taking off. After this incident we made sport of the probability of our being under surveillance.

  Lionel Brockman was finally arrested after a chase which had lasted weeks. He had been dubbed the ‘Desert Fox’ and the ‘Desert Houdini’ by the press for his ability to elude capture. The state had put up helicopters and small planes, searching the thin ribbons of road which criss-crossed the otherwise almost completely empty plains. We found out when he was scheduled to appear in court and Neal, his sister Jenny and I determined to go.

  Meanwhile I had been regularly in touch with William and Mum who, still with Arthur, had shut the shop and moved to Brisbane to be closer to her sister, Aunty Glad. Mum and Arthur frequently shuttled backwards and forwards between Brisbane and the north so that Mum could keep an eye on her houses, maintain her friendships and visit William, Russel and Naomi. From William and Mum I learned that Russel did not seem to be coping well with his separation from me. I asked if I could have the children with me for the holidays, though I had no idea how I would be able to support them. William replied that he would only let Russel come, and then only for a short stay. Naomi was ‘his’ and he didn’t intend to let me see her.

  The morning of Russel’s arrival coincided with the day we were due to depart on the long journey across the Nullarbor Desert to Perth. I recall Russel’s little face as he disembarked from the plane and walked up the hallway, peering anxiously around to see if I was there to meet him. I have no idea what William may have told him, but he looked terribly serious and very concerned. He was just ten years old. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and he was comforted by my presence. I didn’t know how he would react when I told him that we weren’t staying in Melbourne, but were leaving immediately to drive to Perth.

  I had missed the little man, and it almost broke my heart to see him already looking so worried, well before his time. But as for our impending journey, it didn’t matter because wherever I was Russel just wanted to be.
Once he was seated in the car he started talking, and he talked his way almost non-stop across the desert. We were splitting the driving into shifts and Russel’s constant chatter, of his ideas and things that had happened in Townsville, initially disturbed the off-driver who needed to sleep.

  ‘Russel, William wrote to me that you were withdrawn. He said you hardly ever talked any more,’ I said.

  ‘Mummy, I’ve been saving it up for you!’ he replied, and happily launched into yet another anecdote from his life and times at school.

  When my companions heard this, they smiled. They were then happy to tolerate his young, excited voice going on and on in the background while they slept.

  We drove all that day, and throughout the night, arriving in Perth the following afternoon when we went immediately to the office of Jack Davis. Jack, who was already well-known as a poet and local organiser, had indicated his willingness to help us. On our arrival he made arrangements for us to stay at an Aboriginal hostel. Neal and Jenny, although both white, were also welcome to stay at the hostel, which surprised and pleased them enormously.

  We held meetings attended by many local people, as well as attending court on the appointed day. Following his arrest I had written to Lionel, and he had replied, and through our correspondence he knew we intended to make every effort to be there to support him.

  Lionel was a tall, well-built and handsome Black man with the most brilliant sparkling blue eyes, very protective towards his petite wife and immensely proud of his children. His story was simple. After working his entire adult life in a variety of jobs in rural areas, Lionel had been laid off and unable to find more work. For the first time in his life he’d been reduced to going, stony broke, into a government office to seek Aboriginal welfare. He had had to beg donations of small cans of petrol along the way to get there.

 

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