When we’d inspected the program, Germaine said she would see what she could do to round up support. This came to fruition some time later when I was contacted by her friend, Leon Fink.
At one of our meetings I mentioned to Germaine that I intended going to Alice Springs, and she asked if she could accompany me. I laughed, because at that stage I had no idea how I was going to get there, and couldn’t imagine her trying to hitch a lift alongside me. When she heard this she said she would pay the expenses if she could come along. We could fly, although she’d prefer to go by car; it would be more exciting and we’d see more. Did I drive? she asked me, because she did not.
I was surprised by the apparent contradiction of Germaine, an independent feminist, who was dependent on someone to drive her around.
Eventually Germaine said she had pulled a plan together: a friend of hers would lend us a car.
Before we left I laid down some basic rules including no cameras. I wanted the Aboriginal people in the Centre to accept me, and I didn’t want anyone travelling with me to be in a position to exploit them. I planned to camp in the Todd River creekbed and realised that other folk camped there would have little privacy and therefore be open to exploitation on film. I also did not want to be followed. If I walked up and spoke to anyone, I said, Germaine was not to come over to join me unless I indicated it was okay to do so. I knew Germaine did not know much about traditional Aboriginal etiquette, such as the need to cast your eyes down and not eye-ball people, at least until they felt comfortable in your presence and sometimes not at all. Germaine’s piercing scrutiny, I had read, was enough to unnerve all manner of high-fliers overseas. What traditional Aboriginal people would make of her, I had no idea.
When we met to pick up the car, I was carrying only a small amount of gear and I encouraged Germaine to do likewise. She hoped I didn’t mind, she said, but she had packed a polaroid camera. She thought people we met might like to have a photograph of themselves. As she planned to give them the photos, I agreed.
Her friend, whom she introduced to me as ‘Peter’, was messing around with the car, a Valiant station wagon, when we arrived at his place. He was a burly man, big and pudgy. He was stacking things in the car—a mattress, a bag—as if he were coming too, so I asked Germaine. ‘Umm,’ she said, ‘well, yes.’ At the last moment he had said he wanted to come and she thought he would withdraw the loan of his car if she refused.
I was uneasy but Germaine said she had things under control. At least there was someone to share the driving on this long journey and if the trip turned sour because of his company, we’d just leave him and continue some other way.
We were barely out of Sydney when we had our first taste of disaster, a retread stripped off the tyre. When I saw this I was outraged. Fancy setting off to drive two thousands miles through one of the most sparsely populated deserts on earth—on retreads! Peter changed the tyre and we continued a little way before another retread stripped off another tyre.
Germaine knew nothing about cars or desert travel. I had cut my teeth on both with trips around Mt Isa, Townsville and Brisbane, and polished my experience during the trip to Perth. As well, I was quite mechanically minded, having messed around a bit with cars and motorbikes during my youth.
We had to limp to the next garage where we had new tyres fitted all round, I suspect at Germaine’s expense. From there on the trip was, mechanically at least, largely uneventful.
Our journey was well underway when I discovered Peter had a case full of camera equipment stowed under a cloth in the rear. I was very angry and sought to extract from him the same promise as I had from Germaine. He was too casual in his replies and agreement, so I knew I’d have to watch him. He didn’t strike me as a particularly ethical type, a fact I would have known if I’d had the opportunity to do some research on him before we’d left.
Germaine was an excellent travel companion, taking upon herself the task of staying awake and chatting with whoever was driving. From her conversation I realised she was having an affair with Michael Willesee, who at the time was a top television presenter. His sister, Geraldine, a jounalist, was a committed supporter of our struggle. Much of Germaine’s conversation disturbed me, including the degree of intimacy she seemed happy to share, such as ‘a blood-stained handprint on the bonnet of the car’ being her fond memory of one of their encounters. As compensation for her inability to drive, Germaine took over as much as she could in other ways. When we stopped at a garage for showers, for instance, she insisted I have first shower and I found she had washed my dusty clothes in the handbasin by the time I’d finished.
We travelled to Adelaide, then Port Augusta and on up, through the night, to Coober Pedy. At one stage I was catching some rest on a mattress in the back as we rocked around on the sandy track which constituted the road, and when I woke up we had another person in the car. His semitrailer had broken down, I was told, and we were giving him a lift. He had promised to show us where we could buy petrol at any hour in Coober Pedy.
The harder sleeping conditions are, the deeper I seem to sleep. When I next woke we were in Coober Pedy, outside some sort of underground nightclub. As Peter refilled the tank, Germaine leaned against the rear window, effectively stopping anyone from looking into the car and spotting me in the darkness.
When we left, Germaine told me that a man had come out of the club and approached her, asking if she was interested in having a man. He had many clean friends, he said, she could have as many as she liked. They had money and opals. Germaine listened to him in amazement and said, ‘If you think I’ve driven two thousand miles for a fuck, you can forget it.’
I laughed. Germaine, at six foot two, is, to many men, distinctly unapproachable. The man had a lot of gall, but absolutely no luck. He’d chosen to sexually proposition one of the world’s leading feminists. Dumb move. Damned dumb move!
Germaine began having second thoughts about camping in the creekbed. Couldn’t we just spend all day there then sneak back and sleep in a motel late at night? She fancied having a shower. ‘How can we learn the hardships faced by the people who have to live in the creekbed all the time?’ I countered.
Germaine also wanted to have a go at driving. Twin ruts in the sand ran to the horizon in both directions, not another car on the road, not a tree in sight, but she still almost killed us all. She picked up speed, then lost control so that the car began to bounce sideways, back and forwards on each side of the deep ruts. We hit a shallower patch in the road and the car lurched off across the desert. We all agreed this wasn’t the place for her to learn.
Peter was a complete pain in the neck, to Germaine much more than to me. His manners and ignorance were appalling, he was uncouth and interrupted any conversation that Germaine and I began. But worse, he declared his love for Germaine, which he then thought gave him licence to carry on like a fool. Even halfway through the trip, when we stopped to eat, Germaine and I would order our meal then go and stand in the ladies’ room to avoid his company while our food was being prepared.
By the time we arrived in Alice Springs, the Valiant was in a bad way and had to be booked in for a service and repair. The garage loaned us a vehicle to use while this was being done. It was a big American car, an unconverted left-hand drive, which meant the driver had to be virtually in the gutter while driving along.
I had done a bit of homework and had the address of an Aboriginal woman, Joyce Clague, and her husband, Colin, who, I’d been told, would be pleased to see us and give us assistance. Although Joyce hailed from Bundjalung country on the east coast, she had very good relationships with a large number of traditional people.
Joyce offered us showers, refreshments and advice on the local scene, and did not appear surprised when I told her we intended to camp in the creekbed. While Joyce and I talked, Germaine again hand-washed my clothes, and because Peter was lounging around talking to her, he dumped his dirty clothes in the tub too. He then produced a camera and took a photo of her scrubbing over the w
ash-tub which, to my amazement and disgust, he later sold to a Sydney newspaper which ran it on the front page. Of course by that time, all the washing Germaine was doing was ‘his’, and the liberated woman was made to appear domestically shackled.
After a quick trip to the supermarket to pick up basic supplies, we drove to the creekbed, threw the mattresses on the ground and set up our camp. We were exhausted from the trip, and with the melancholy sounds of a distant didgeridu playing in our ears, we fell into a sound sleep.
When I began to stir next morning, I could hear Germaine fiddling around with some things on her side of the double mattress which we shared. When I opened my eyes, Germaine presented me with a tin of apricots, the lid removed and a spoon upright in it, and said, ‘Room service!’ in a very Hollywood manner. I had to laugh.
However, we soon learned some of the many discomforts of camping in the creekbed, lack of toilet facilities being one of them. Later, we spoke with other camping families and groups, all Aboriginal, and they asked us if we had heard a car during the night. Some white yobbos, knowing Aboriginal families were living in their path, had driven a vehicle quickly along the middle of the creekbed, and parents had been lucky to snatch their sleeping children out of its way. We had placed our camp very much to the side, and I doubt that the sound of a herd of elephants would have woken me, such was my tiredness.
One shy woman, sitting on a blanket with an infant in her lap, hissed for my attention as Germaine and I walked away. When I returned, alone, she pulled a rather ragged-edged magazine out from under the blanket, flicked it open to a page, and said to me, ‘Is that her? That white woman?’ I looked and saw a photo of Germaine, and when I nodded, her eyes opened wide with pleasure and surprise, and we both laughed.
Germaine could only spend a short time in Alice as she had to fly back to give her speech at the Sydney Town Hall. We used the time as best we could, talking to people and, one day, attending a session at the court house. When we arrived I was pleased to see a lot of Aboriginal people just standing around in the courtroom. One of the things we were advocating in Sydney was that Blacks, particularly youths, should go into courts and familiarise themselves with the environment and proceedings so that, should they later be arrested, they might not be so intimidated by the process. I was disturbed then to learn that all the Aboriginal people standing around so casually were up on charges.
Taking a seat at the press table, I thought I’d write a story on the day for Nation Review. (The Review became Nation Review in 1972.) I was immediately challenged. As I didn’t carry press papers I had to vacate the chair. I moved to one of the long benches directly behind the table and pulled out my notebook and pencil. The courtroom attendant came over again straightaway to tell me I was not permitted to write in the court. I said, ‘I understand I’m allowed to do anything in the court as long as I don’t make noise. Isn’t that right?’ Germaine took a seat towards the back.
Not long after proceedings began, a local reporter came in and sat at the press table. After he had taken out his notebook and pen, he turned to look at me making notes with my pad balanced on my lap. ‘Come and sit up here,’ he said. ‘These seats are all empty. I’m the only one who ever comes here, except when there’s a big case, a murder trial or something.’ With his permission, I joined him.
By the time court recessed, we had begun to discern a pattern to the magistrate’s sentencing. The overwhelming majority of charges against Aborigines, men and women, were for ‘drunk and disorderly’. The couple of white defendants were heard first, on more serious charges, and their cases held over to be scheduled for another day. Then the long procession of Aboriginal people began shuffling into the dock.
‘Drunk and disorderly, Your Honour,’ the prosecutor intoned as each new face took the stand.
‘How do you plead?’ The magistrate barely glanced at the defendant, his eyes scanning the papers in front of him.
Mumble, mumble, came each Aborigine’s reply, at which there was a pause, and the magistrate would then calculate the person’s punishment. His system seemed to operate on this basis: if the person had not been arrested at all since the beginning of the year, he or she was cautioned and discharged. Those who had been arrested previously were fined. The penalties rose in increments of ten dollars for each offence. It was obvious from the poverty of their clothes and their demeanour that hardly anyone could make their fine, so they were actually being sent to gaol for similarly incremental periods stated by the magistrate. Each person’s case took only a few minutes to be heard, none had legal representation, and most had very little grasp of English. It was an assembly line of Black people being tossed into gaol.
Only one, a young woman, said ‘not guilty’, at which the magistrate’s head snapped up. He made her repeat the plea, it seemed that he thought he had misheard it.
‘Go to the back of the court. I’ll hear you later,’ he said, and she quietly padded on her bare feet to wait at the end of the queue.
Close to a hundred people were being heard in the court that day, a goodly number of whom had already been processed by the time the magistrate announced recess. Everyone crowded onto the verandah for a breath of fresh air.
I sat on a long bench outside where ‘prisoners’ and spectators alike were mingling, close by some very young Aboriginal girls. After pausing a moment to speak with the young woman who had pled not guilty, Germaine joined me. I had by then struck up a conversation with the young girl sitting nearest me, who was very dark and pretty and spoke English quite well.
As soon as Germaine sat down, she leaned across me and asked the girl, ‘Were you in the lock-up on the weekend?’ at which the girl nodded. ‘Do the police ever hit you?’ The girl looked around to ensure that she was not going to be overheard, and replied quietly, ‘Yes.’
‘Do they try to have sex with you?’ Germaine continued, and the girl, blushing and squirming on her seat, again answered affirmatively.
‘How many times? How many times have police had sex with you?’ A tone of outrage had entered Germaine’s voice, and even she was looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.
‘Five or six times,’ the young girl replied.
‘Five or six times?’ Germaine was agitated and indignant. ‘Five or six times when?’
‘Five or six times—last night,’ was the girl’s quiet reply. Germaine leapt to her feet and walked to the edge of the verandah. I could see that the girl thought perhaps she had said something wrong to upset Germaine, so I took her thin hand in mine and, gently stroking it, said, ‘It’s alright. Nothing’s the matter. She just wanted to know, that’s all.’
By the time court was reconvened, the magistrate had been made aware of the presence of Germaine in the room. Every case which he then heard, he cautioned and discharged, breaking the pattern he had established earlier.
By lunch break we had seen and heard enough, and decided to spend the afternoon doing something else. The young woman who Germaine had spoken to had told her that she had pleaded ‘not guilty’ because she had a baby at home and she wasn’t going to go to gaol ‘this time’.
That night in a restaurant, when Germaine and I took up our usual place in the ladies’ room while waiting for our meal, we discussed the events of the day. Germaine appeared to be devastated and talked at length of the young girl’s apparent lack of indignation at her situation. ‘It’s probably happened to her older sisters and her friends, and maybe she just thinks it’s her turn now. Rape must be a way of life out here,’ she said. I agreed that this might be true, but added that, even if this were the case, the girl would still suffer enormous loss of self-esteem. ‘It will be a wonder,’ I added, ‘if she doesn’t turn out alcoholic. It’s a major problem out here.’
We were continuing to discuss the impact of rape on the psyche when Germaine suddenly stared me in the eyes and said, ‘You know so much about this. Have you been raped?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t talk about it,’ and demur
red from giving details. I did not then know that I would come to deeply regret my own honesty.
8
I had been apprehensive about Germaine’s departure from Alice Springs, wondering how I would return to Sydney. I didn’t have any cash to pay for a flight, and I certainly didn’t fancy travelling alone with Peter. He solved my dilemma by announcing that he was flying back with Germaine, and leaving me to drive his car back alone. He said he’d cover the expenses.
The trip was hazardous. Instead of returning through Adelaide, I chose to go up the highway, then right to Mt Isa and out onto the coast. A longer route, but more populated. I was pursued for miles up the highway by menacing drinkers in Tennant Creek after I had stopped there briefly at a hotel—petrol pump to take on fuel. Later, a front tyre blew out when I was travelling at over a hundred miles an hour. Fortunately there wasn’t another car within sight nor a tree within cooee, and I was able to wrestle the steering wheel to a safe stop. A series of flash storms hit once I passed the Isa, turning the dirt roads into a thick grey mud. Along with other drivers and their passengers, I helped us all to cross a flooded river, and then, just as night fell, another storm hit and we all became bogged.
In the morning we trudged for miles overland, in the direction that one of our number claimed to have seen the lights of a town the previous night. The thick mud stuck to our legs and forced us to pause every few yards to scrape some off with sticks. Otherwise, with the weight of it, we would not have been able to continue.
We spent five or six days in that little town, which was just a railway siding consisting only of a hotel, church Hall and a few houses. The hotel was unable to accommodate everyone and most of the men from the group had to camp in the Hall. When the ground became sufficiently firm again, an earth-moving company offered to bring the cars in so we could put them on a train and freight them to Cloncurry where the bitumen road to the coast began. From there, I travelled on to Townsville, where I took the opportunity to pay a very brief visit to my children, then on through Brisbane, where I picked up a passenger, Sammy Watson Junior, who was a regular at the Embassy, and on to Sydney where I left the car before continuing to Canberra.
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