Snake Dancing

by Roberta Sykes

  I also felt ignorant and spent much of my time reading. I owned no radio or television, which may have provided a distraction, instead preferring the written word. With little cash to outlay on this obsession, I picked up any book or paper anyone else laid down, even pilfering newspapers left on trains or buses and carrying them off like a prize to read alone at home. I had developed a passion for reading mystery novels, murder stories and the like. I gained a great deal of pleasure from reading about bad guys who had hurt others being caught and punished, even though they were fictional characters.

  By this time I had many regular readers of, and commentors on, my Review column. Frequently they expressed their opinion that other newspapers were doing the public a disservice by not having Blacks writing on these issues. The Review had a comparatively small, though committed, readership, and its editors felt that news from inside the struggle could best be supplied by Blacks and should enjoy a much wider readership.

  So much was happening during this period that it’s impossible to record all the events. Police in Redfern were carrying out regular raids on houses and hotels lived in or frequented by Blacks, and making many, and indiscriminate, arrests. Their activities caught the attention of civil liberties groups as well as priests, brothers and nuns from the Catholic Church. Sister Ignatius from St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst, who was over eighty years old, became a very active protester during this time, and was well-known for chasing after police officers during their rampages and recording their badge numbers. Many police began to remove their badges prior to raids in their efforts to become anonymous in their misdeeds.

  Although not an everyday occurrence, police broke down the doors to houses in the middle of the night. Their only reason was because of the occupants’ political activities. When we were pulled up by police on the street, we were often told we were ‘well-known troublemakers’. This type of harassment caused us all to grow wary and secretive, even as we intensified our efforts to bring our community’s conditions out for the scrutiny of the public.

  Possibly because they realised they had unofficial police sanction, racist and anti-Aboriginal groups stepped up their activities against us. When we held meetings that were advertised in advance, it was not unusual to find thugs waiting for us as we left. On occasions when Blacks were bashed by these thugs, police often took hours to respond to our calls. On the weekend that I published an article in The Review about the harassment we were facing, its Sydney office was broken into and ransacked, and swastikas were painted on the walls and scrawled across their cheque books.

  Often MumShirl and I went together to speak to white groups about the needs of the Medical Service, the Black community generally, and what we were hoping to achieve by the Embassy. After one such meeting early in the process, while we were having a cup of tea with the women who had invited us, one woman asked me what my tribal affiliations were. I replied that I had none that I was aware of.

  Later, MumShirl took me to task. She said she had heard that I was telling people I wasn’t Aboriginal, and asked if I knew how much this insulted Aboriginal people? ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I can’t prove that I am. I have reason to think I am, but I can’t prove it.’

  ‘But,’ said MumShirl, ‘can you prove that you’re not?’

  When I said that I couldn’t prove anything either way, that my mother was secretive about her own ancestry and had given me a pack of different stories about who my father was, MumShirl said that I was choosing not to be Aboriginal. This caused me to reflect deeply on my own motives. Did I not want to be aligned with people whom my own mother had so negatively portrayed? Was I constantly reacting against the mantra of evil, ‘Abo. Abo. Just a fucking boong!’, which had been thrown up by one of my attackers at his trial? Or was I trying to establish a separate, and in some way ‘special’, category just for myself?

  I agonised over these questions. MumShirl had a way of getting to the very heart of a matter, and her decision to inform me of the pain I was causing bothered me acutely. How many others, I wondered, had I insulted with my posturing? Was there any way to find out? And how could I correct any damage I may have done?

  Again I tried to prise information from my mother. I insisted that I had to know, that other people were asking me and I wanted to be able to answer. ‘Roberta,’ Mum said, ‘have you asked these other people for something? How come they think they have a right to know your business, and mine?’

  ‘No, Mum, I’ve asked for nothing,’ I replied.

  But of course I had. By my actions I was asking for a place in the struggle, for the opportunity to fight and, if necessary, to die, for what we believed in—equality, decency and a fair go. I had had enough of the way we were all being treated, and I didn’t want my children, or any Black children, to live the way I had been forced to as a young person. The hardship, discrimination and violence I had faced in my youth had taken their toll, and I felt no price, not even life itself, was too high to pay for change.

  I sometimes felt that I had been placed in a position where I had to choose between MumShirl and my own mother; this feeling was heightened when Mum saw a television program in which MumShirl introduced me as her daughter. Mum said she was very sorry if she was an embarrassment to me, sorry if she was not a ‘MumShirl’, and began to cry. I thought of the woman who had run with me in her arms over the hill in the middle of the night in an effort to save my life, the woman who had stood so firmly by me throughout the dark days following the rape and throughout the trials, and whose motivation was that she feared for my life and the lives of my children. I held my tongue and consoled her. But I thought, too, of the hardships MumShirl had faced throughout her life and her own valiant struggle for survival. She lived with danger every day, the same sort of threat I lived under, and my identification with her was all but absolute.

  Although my flat was tiny, it was very convenient. As well as using it for work, from time to time the second single bed was pressed into service, despite Ian’s admonition to the contrary. Travellers, I decided, especially those coming through from Queensland, would be welcomed—such visits would keep me up to date with what was happening in my home state.

  Denis Walker had gained a reputation amongst Sydney Blacks for his unpredictable anger and outbursts, and although his brilliance was always welcomed at meetings people shied away from offering him accommodation. I had no such difficulty with him and, contrary to what others told me, I found him to always be a gentleman when I was around. Much to my colleagues’ surprise perhaps, he stayed at my flat several times. I made the house rules explicit, no alcohol, drugs, or dalliance, and he complied. He seemed grateful, I think, just to have a friend on whom he could rely. We discussed many things.

  My flat, I am sure, was kept under surveillance. I received a phone call one day from Eric Strasser, who wanted to meet me in town. Two detectives, he said, had called on my renting agent, quizzing him about me in a manner designed to raise his curiosity, bring me into disrepute and have me evicted. The agent had contacted Eric immediately. Eric was concerned that when the police realised their tactics had not brought about the desired result, they might think up some way to harass me further or even to arrest me. We made plans to guard against this possibility. I was grateful for his friendship and concern.

  Camaraderie amongst those of us who were active at the Embassy was high, but this is not to say that we didn’t have discipline problems occasionally. We’d set rules, to which we had all agreed—no alcohol, drugs or casual sexual dalliances, particularly of an inter-racial nature, were to be tolerated. Of course there were always, as in any group, isolated cases where people broke the rules. Chicka Dixon and I often rotated between us the responsibility of going to Canberra ‘to straighten up the camp’ when we heard of these infractions.

  Throwing my energies into these political activities meant I had little time to brood about my children. I missed them every day, but we were confronting enormous difficulties, politically and economically,
and I was often glad that they were not exposed to these problems.

  Mum, however, was increasingly unhappy about my activities, though she insisted she was concerned only for my safety. From time to time, death threats were made against those of us who were prominently associated with the Embassy, both individually and collectively. I wrote to Mum pointing out that I had been in much greater danger before, as I had been raped and near murdered when we weren’t making waves, and that if we backed off things would just revert to those bad old days.

  Mum wrote, ‘I know you think you know what you are doing, dear, but remember what happened to Martin Luther King?’

  I responded, ‘Yes, Mum, and I’ll try to keep more than a cardboard placard between me and the bad guys. Okay?’ But Mum was not placated.

  Another conference was called in Brisbane and I had been asked to go there in advance to assist with its organisation. Mum had moved to Labrador, a little township just north of Surfers Paradise, where she and Arthur were living in a caravan park. I decided to visit her to assure her that I was well.

  However, just as I was about to leave Sydney, word came in that a death-list had been posted. Pastor Brady’s church in Brisbane had already been bombed, and the lives of key organisers around the conference were threatened and my name was on the list. I was, as usual, almost broke, so I couldn’t afford to sit around idle at Mum’s place instead of going on to team up with the other conference organisers.

  ‘What are you doing here, dear?’ Mum greeted me.

  ‘Just come by to see you, Mum,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, and . . .’ said Mum sceptically.

  ‘Well, I thought I’d get a job here for a while.’

  ‘I thought you were a jounalist in Sydney,’ Mum said, trying to get her head around this sudden turn of events.

  ‘I am, Mum, but I think it would be fun to work here for a while. I’ll look for a job as a waitress. It will give me something more to write about.’

  ‘You’ve already been a waitress, Roberta. Is there anything you want to tell me?’

  I gambled that it would be unlikely she would hear about these latest death threats and I didn’t want her to worry unnecessarily. I also thought that whatever fools had put out the death list were unlikely to have any idea of my family ties, would not know where to find me, and that my presence at her place would not endanger her. So I said no.

  The next day I put on a little straight-haired black wig, which I had packed at the last moment, and went out looking for a job. I found one at a seaside hotel not too far from the caravan park. Arthur would pass it every day on his way to his new hairdressing premises, so he could drive me in and pick me up.

  The hotel manager walked around all day with two Doberman dogs at his side. I was mortified—snakes and dogs don’t mix. I hadn’t seen them when I applied for the job, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken it. The work wasn’t difficult, though I spent a lot of energy keeping some distance between myself and the dogs. Fortunately, the manager’s wife mainly ran the dining facility and he ran the bar, so I ‘imagined’ the presence of the dogs far more often than I actually saw them.

  One day I received a card from the post office, telling me I had a parcel to collect. I had asked Neil, in Melbourne, to forward my boots on to me at Mum’s as I thought I would need them in the cooler weather.

  I could find nowhere to park outside the post office so I asked Mum to get the parcel while I sat double-parked. Through the large glass window I saw the man place the parcel on the counter and Mum, unaware that I could see her, bent down and put her ear to the parcel before picking it up. When she came out, she walked gingerly and carried the parcel at arm’s length. She passed it to me through the open window, but didn’t open the door.

  ‘What is it, Roberta?’ she asked through the window.

  ‘Just shoes, Mum. I know what it is.’

  ‘Open it,’ she ordered me.

  I opened the parcel and the boots fell out onto the floor. Mum then opened the door and got in.

  Until then I hadn’t realised how afraid for me Mum was, and I felt very sorry for the anxiety my activities caused her. She was already an old woman, approaching seventy, having had me when she was forty. I couldn’t stop doing what I was doing, though, not even to bring her peace. A better future for my children depended on what we were doing now, and if I lost my life in the process, I thought, far better to die for something I believed in than to have to live with regret for not struggling against the forces of racism and evil.

  When two weeks were up, I left to attend the conference. The media coverage had alerted the police to the death threats, and although they scoffed they were obliged to extend some degree of protection towards participants, and the conference proceeded without incident.

  7

  I was at home in the flat in Sydney when I received a unexpected phone call from Ian in Melbourne. Some woman, he said, visiting from overseas had spoken to Leon Fink, saying she had heard that one of the Black leaders was a woman, and she wanted to meet her. The international media had carried news of the Embassy around the world, and we knew that pictures had made the front page of newspapers in countries as far away as Germany and the United States. This woman, Ian told me, was an Australian living in England, but she maintained an interest in what was happening here. She was in Australia to promote her book, The Female Eunuch. Had I heard of her? Germaine Greer?

  The truth was that I could barely afford to eat, much less buy newspapers or magazines, and I didn’t own a television. I tried to stay abreast of what was happening outside the Black community but as I was travelling around so much, well, no, I didn’t know of this woman.

  Leon wanted to introduce Germaine to me by phone and, after I had spoken to her, I might agree to meet with her.

  The accent of the woman who came on the line was a cross between British and Australian, but she was pleasant so I agreed to see her. We arranged to meet at the Jungle Bar at the top of the escalator at Wynyard Station. I didn’t know this person and I felt that having a drink together would give us enough time for a first meeting. If I could see any purpose in it, perhaps I would meet her again.

  I went to the local newsagent to see if I could find out who this woman was and, sure enough, dailies and magazines were all carrying news of her visit. She was being trumpeted as Australia’s leading feminist who had made a big mark on the world stage, back home, amongst other things, to give a speech at Sydney Town Hall.

  On learning this I became apprehensive about meeting her. What did she want with me? I phoned Gordon Briscoe, who was considered more an Aboriginal moderate than a militant, and asked him if he would accompany me. At least he knew who Germaine was, which was a real plus.

  At this first meeting, Germaine did not come across as either high-powered or flamboyant which, for some reason, I had imagined she would. Later, when I knew her a little better, I considered the possibility that she had just been subdued until she could fathom my expectations.

  Germaine asked a lot of questions about Kooris she had heard of through the news, most of them men. However, perhaps because she hadn’t read anything about Gordon, she only made light conversation with him. Then again, she may have thought Gordon and I were an item, or that he was my bodyguard, neither of which was the case.

  Her interest in our community programs pleased me, and we met several times, whenever I was up from Canberra. Once, Paul Coe and I were guests on the television program ‘Monday Conference’, and Germaine phoned me at the studio. I told her I was flying back immediately but, as it turned out, I missed the last plane to Canberra, so Robert Moore, the program’s host, invited Paul and me back to his home for dinner. Germaine learned of this and phoned me again at his flat, inviting me to join her at a party, and Paul had no intention of being left out.

  The party was held at a grand mansion in Centennial Park, and the guests included Leon and Margaret Fink, Gordon Barton, and numerous other luminaries, most of whom, of course, I did not
know. While Germaine and I stood by the huge columns at the front of the house, she loudly gave me a running commentary on every man who walked past alone. She was sending up the way in which men often spoke about women, discussing their physical features and attributing behaviours to them on that basis. ‘That’s one a fat slob, just look at his gut. Oh, now he’s got a cute butt, I bet he can go. Hmm, and that one, he’s very nice looking—but I hear he’s the town bike.’ She had me in fits of laughter, while the men, red-faced and disbelieving her audacity, didn’t know how to react.

  Paul tried to work the crowd inside, but it appeared to me from the distance that people were in a party mood and not open to his attempts to inform them of Aboriginal politics. Eventually he joined Germaine and me, and he elaborated on a feed-the-children program he was involved in, which I had mentioned to her earlier. The aim of the project was to prepare breakfast for inner-city children before school and it was operating with the assistance and under the largesse of the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross. Germaine was very interested and wished to see the program in action, so we told her she would have to be up very early next day in order to do so. Then we took our leave.

  The next morning we must have been a curious sight as we made our way through Surry Hills towards the park where the program was operating in Darlington. Despite the cold, Germaine wore high-heel sandals and with her long legs she fairly bounded along. I had to really pump my legs and run to keep up with her.