Snake Dancing

by Roberta Sykes

  Although we tried to resist, we had to disperse under their brutal assault and I ran onto the street to get photographs of what was happening. Police had earlier blocked off the road so there wasn’t any danger from vehicles. I was pursued by police while taking photos and carried off, photographed by an officer and put into the wagon. In the process, the police arresting me managed to ensure that my legs were drawn over the sharp edge of a step up into the vehicle, scraping all the skin off my shins. I cried out with the sharp pain, and others already in the wagon caught me and helped me up. Even more joined us, some being thrown in so roughly that they fell onto the floor and hit and injured their heads on the wagon’s tough floor. The two Garys, Foley and Williams, were amongst those of us who had been arrested.

  At Canberra Police Station, we were unloaded into a large cage in the basement. I was the only woman present. We were made to stand apart from each other under the eye of an officer who stood by the door. I was concerned when, one by one, the men were taken upstairs to be formally charged and it appeared that I was going to be left alone in the cage with just a male officer. When I voiced my fears a Koori man was left with me until a female officer, who was off-duty and had to be called in, at last arrived.

  The officer in the cage had told me that I was to be charged with ‘about twelve’ counts of assaulting police, and that they had video-tape evidence to support these charges. When the time came, however, I was charged with obstructing traffic. I was less than charmed by the police woman’s description of my hair typed on the charge form. ‘Frizzy,’ she wrote. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of an afro?’ I inquired.

  With Eric Strasser’s help I was eventually released on my own recognisance and approached by television scouts to appear on Michael Willesee’s show, ‘A Current Affair’. I was to fly to Sydney and be interviewed, by co-axial cable, by Michael in Melbourne. I already had a return ticket but I used the ticket they gave me to take Gary Williams with me. We were both sore and badly bruised as we were brought to the studio.

  Gary was an articulate young man with a great deal of potential whose risks that day had been the same as my own, and so I was highly suspicious of why I’d been singled out to appear on the show. I was asked to stand by a curtain and come out on-camera when I heard my name called. Gary stood by me. When I heard my name I gave Gary a push and he went out and did the program in my stead. I watched him on a little monitor and, replete with dust and bruises of the day, he gave viewers a clear picture of the events we had endured.

  Over the next three days we were busy organising. We planned to re-erect the Embassy on Parliament’s front lawn on Sunday. Bus loads of people were being brought in for support.

  Some of us were in Canberra on Saturday to finalise arrangements. We were informed that Ralph Hunt had sent a telegram to Alice Springs, cancelling an appointment he had there and saying he had to stay on in Canberra because he was expecting ‘a blood-bath’. Up to this point we had managed well as we went about our preparations, but news of the cable injected great apprehension into our proceedings. A federal politician with insider-knowledge was predicting bloodshed, and we knew the blood was meant to be ours. Some of the organisers stayed up all night anxiously but, as usual when times are tough, I managed to sleep.

  Commercial and public television cameras were in place on the day, and many of the events which transpired made the evening news. Hundred of armed police stormed across the lawns and beat up un-armed demonstrators, men and women alike, and several of our people were carried away by ambulance. We were told that a contingent of soldiers was standing at the ready, out of sight behind Parliament House, in case the efforts of the police force were not successful. I was a marshall that day, one of the first to be knocked out of the way, with the following lines of police then running over me. Cheryl Buchanan was struck on the spine and injured. Our Embassy tent was again removed.

  Some media reports stated that several police officers had been injured and taken to hospital. A leak at the hospital provided us with reports on these injuries. They consisted in the main of abrasions to the hands, where knuckles had connected with people’s faces and teeth.

  The Aboriginal Embassy had been operating peacefully for seven months. We had carefully tended the lawn by constantly moving the tents around, and over time hundreds of tour buses had put us on their itineraries. We had been visited by state premiers, politicians and overseas visitors. Yet in full view of all these interested people and more, William McMahon’s Liberal government had taken this violent action against us. With the stroke of a pen, it had made our protest ‘illegal’. Members of the government were unaware of the extent to which this would eventually backfire on them.

  Not to be easily defeated, we ventured to put up a new tent the following weekend. We found it impossible to believe that what was legal one day could have been made illegal the next. Our organisation was assisted by the media coverage our assault had received, and offers of assistance came in from right across Australia.

  Coincidentally, the country was in the middle of a petrol strike, which made it difficult for everyone who wanted to support us to attend. Kooris who drove up in a bus from Victoria each had to contribute a small can of petrol to fill the tank.

  Organisers were gratified when thousands responded to the call to attend. The Adelaide Aboriginal community sent a bus load of strong men, ready to be on the defensive if required. Sydney sent several buses, carrying not only Blacks but also union members who wished to support our efforts. A bus load of people from Brisbane arrived, and we had to find warmer clothing for many of them as they had not anticipated how cold it would be.

  Unfortunately not everyone on the lawn that day was there with good intent. Marshalling once more, I walked past a group of bikies, one of whom flashed a knife and said, ‘I’ll get a piggie for you today, my lovely.’ I was mortified! I knew that if anyone responded to the police violence with their own violence, we Blacks would get the blame.

  My most poignant memory of that day, however, is of an elderly white couple who were sitting quietly holding hands on the grass. They were right in the way. I thought perhaps they didn’t know what was going on, so I approached them. They almost looked liked they were praying. Yes, they said, they did know this was an Aboriginal protest, and that the police were likely to come. But they had seen the viciousness of the police on television the previous week, and if this is what Australia had come down to, they no longer wanted to live. They would be quite happy to sit there and let the police run over them and kill them, they said, such was their dismay and despair.

  Prior to our demonstration, police came to the Students Union which we were using as our headquarters and requested a meeting with the leaders. They said they hoped to avoid the bloodshed of the previous week. We listened while they told us that it was their job to maintain law and order. Then we gave them our views on how they had turned an orderly protest into the melee which had come to reflect so poorly on them.

  ‘But what can we do?’ they asked. ‘We’ve been set an impossible task.’

  ‘Do you see all those buses that are arriving, bringing people in from all over the country?’ I asked. ‘Well, at the end of the day, what do you think those people will do? You have given the stipulation that you intend to remove the tents, if we put them up, at two o’clock. So, in fact, you’ve set the time for any clash that might occur. But what about three o’clock? What about four? And do you know that, at about five, most of the people have to get back on the buses and return to their homes in Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere. Or did you think they were going to stay here?’

  We could see the penny drop as expressions of understanding dawned on their faces. They had looked only at the removal of our Embassy as their imperative, not at the maintenance of law and order.

  At two o’clock we stood at the ready around the tent we had erected. Nothing happened, no police came marching in columns across the street as they had a week earlier. By three, standing out in the
warm sun, we were beginning, in fact, to get tired. At three-thirty, shadows were starting to lengthen in the short Canberra winter day, and some of the long distance buses were pulling in and loading up. Organisers and others sat in the tent Embassy, posing for pictures and collecting signatures for our records. Departing supporters felt triumphant because the tent remained erect so long past the police deadline. Our sheer numbers, it was felt, had staved off the attack.

  The police, however, didn’t want to be seen to have completely lost face, to have backed down, so as soon as the majority of protesters had left, a bunch of them came across the street and demanded the tent come down. We stood back and watched while they removed the pegs and uprights, rolled the canvas up and walked away. Quite a few of us were still there, and we whipped out another sheet of canvas and held it aloft with our hands. The tent, we felt, was not what was important, it was the symbolism of what it represented. A piece of ragged canvas held high by many hands still has the power to evoke that symbol of our destitution and living conditions, even today.

  Police, by then on the other side of the street, looked over and saw what they mistook for another tent. They raced back, pounding their feet and pumping up their adrenalin. But when they got in very close, they saw that there was nothing there but our symbolic re-erection and, turning, they went off sheepishly. We followed them, laughing and chanting. One of our most bitter disappointments about the actions the police had taken against us was that, during the seven months through which our Embassy had stood, police had come by and often stopped to join us for hot tea or coffee, especially late on cold nights. They had chatted with us in a way which encouraged us to believe they were trying to be friendly, and it came as a harsh blow to have them then turn around and attack us when their political masters ordered them to do so. Our resentment at what we saw as their treachery found release in the taunts we hurled at them that day. Then we all packed up and left Canberra to return to our homes.

  In Sydney, I was contacted by Leon Fink, and we met to talk about the needs of the feed-the-children program. Recent newspaper reports had said the program, which provided food for children on their way to school, was being well-attended but that the kids had to stand out in the rain and cold to eat because there wasn’t any cover. Leon thought that he could help with this inadequacy and asked me to drive around with him to look at some empty buildings that might suit us. Only one was sufficiently central to be useful for the purpose: a disused warehouse in Shepherd Street, Chippendale, next door to a carpet factory.

  I explained that we had absolutely no money to pay rent, and he said he was prepared to make the building available to us rent-free for a year. We would have to adapt the building to suit our needs. But we had no money to do that, either, so, with a sigh, he promised to see what he could do. We’d need, he said, a kitchen and cooking utensils, tiny tables and chairs, tiny toilets and wash-basins, but first the place would have to be cleaned out, lined and painted.

  This all sounded like a dream to me as I looked around the dark interior of the building. I just couldn’t envisage it coming true. Hopeful, yes. Optimistic, no. So I was greatly surprised as the project began to take shape, but I kept thinking the dream would disappear. While this was going on, Norma Ingram, Lyn Craigie and others were continuing to meet the needs of the children each morning, out in the cold in the park. I didn’t dare share with them the news of the building because I thought that if it was suddenly withdrawn I would be the only one disappointed. Their task was so onerous that to burden them with a lift and then a letdown seemed to me to be incredibly unfair.

  In a very short time Leon rang to tell me the building was finished and that I could pick up the keys from him when he was next visiting the carpet factory which, as it turned out, he also owned. He gave me an inspection and I had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake. As we looked around he said, ‘Now, all you’ll need will be plates and spoons and things.’ He paused for a moment and, without my having said a word, he continued, ‘Oh, alright. I’ll give you the name of a company. Go there and have them put it on my account.’ I hastened to the address in Surry Hills and chose plain but serviceable dishes from the wholesaler Leon had nominated.

  I still had the charge from my arrest in Canberra hanging over me. So, I made the rounds of some legal people I had met, several of whom offered to represent me for free, but I told them I wished to defend myself in court. All I required, I said, was advice. Paul Landa, later to become a NSW state politician, was amongst those who gave me their legal opinion on how to handle my defence. Eric Strasser, whom I normally turned to in legal matters, was not registered to practise in Canberra, though following my arrest there he quickly took care of this oversight.

  The case was looming, and though everyone said if I asked for a continuance I would get it, I had been invited to travel to England on a lecture tour and didn’t wish to leave any matters unresolved here. I picked up the keys to the new quarters for the feed-the-children program the day before my departure for Canberra to have this case heard. Friends in Canberra had also asked me to accompany them to Thredbo for two days. I had never been to the snow and this prospect was attractive.

  When I gave the keys to Lyn Craigie, I didn’t have time to explain much at all. ‘There’s a warehouse in Chippendale that’s been converted for you to use for the kids’ breakfast program. You have it rent-free for a year. Here is the address, these are the keys. You can go over now and check it out. Sorry, I’ve got to run.’ There was no disbelief on her face, just stunned surprise.

  Four days later, when I returned from Canberra where I did not feel I had won my case even though it was ‘proved but not recorded’, I whizzed around the streets of Redfern and visited some of my usual haunts: the Legal Service and the Medical Service. While doing my rounds, I was surprised to hear rumours pertaining to my acquisition of the keys to the building. The benefactor was unknown at the time as I had omitted to mention his name in my hasty departure. Instead I found that the gift was being attributed to me, and there had been wild speculation about how I may have come by such a lot of money. Prostitution, it had been decided, seemed the only possible way.

  I went storming off to Lyn Craigie’s house in Burton Street, Darlinghurst. A recent police raid had seen her front door torn from its hinges so her place looked very patchy. Lyn was hanging her baby’s nappies on the clothes line out the back and she warily invited me back there so that she could complete the task while her infant, Yeena, was sleeping. From her manner I knew that she realised I had heard the rumours and had worked out that she must have been party to their circulation, though I knew she hadn’t come up with this stuff alone.

  I followed Lyn up and down the clothes line, berating her, trying to get her to see sense. ‘Gee, you must think I’m terrific. A prostitute who spends her money on children. Do you have any idea how much the building and renovations cost? A fortune! You must think I’m a terrific prostitute to have earned all that money. Or do you think maybe I just had one customer, someone who paid me a fortune for sex. Well, you must think I’m a terrific lay!’

  Having said my piece, I didn’t hang around. Lyn hadn’t raised her eyes to me throughout the entire performance. I went back to my little flat in Surry Hills and sulked, giving my words time to get around. A day or two later, I went down to the building to check out what was happening. I found the women happily settling in, tidying up dishes, wiping counters, and absolutely thrilled about having the premises.

  I took Lyn Craigie and Norma Ingram aside and said I wanted them to meet the owner. I had phoned Leon Fink and arranged a day when he would be spending time at the carpet factory, and got Lyn and Norma to agree to the time. With my trip to England pending, I knew I could no longer act the middle-man, they would have to deal with each other direct.

  Although I’d blown up at Lyn, when I thought the whole thing through I wasn’t even angry. A bit hurt, yes, but angry, no. None of us had had, up to this time, any experience with altruism. Wh
at few material goods we had we’d got by working, begging, borrowing and, sometimes, stealing. That someone would, out of the blue, give us something so valuable for nothing was completely beyond our experience. If I had doubted all along that we would actually end up with the use of the building, their reactions also had to be considered reasonable under the circumstances.

  Norma and Lyn were charmed by Leon Fink, who told them that they were to call on him if there was anything more he could help them with. As a footnote to this episode, when I returned from England I again called by the Shepherd Street address. The place was operating wonderfully, upstairs had been turned into an administrative centre and new ideas for raising support for the centre and widening its field of operation had been generated. Norma pointed out to me that the upstairs section had been completely fitted out with new carpet.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘so who had to sleep with someone to get this?’

  At this, we all had a good laugh.

  The building later became the Murawina Preschool, which operated there for about eight years.

  I had been invited to undertake a speaking tour in England by a group of expatriate Australians who called their organisation Abjab. The name, I was told, had no meaning. I was nervous about travelling so far to a country where I knew no one apart from the disembodied voice of a host on the phone, but quite apart from that, the notion of ‘England’ as the home base of the racism that flourished in Australia was not inviting.

  When he realised how nervous I was, Michael Willesee, with whom I had become friendly through his relationship with Germaine, invited me out for a quick meal and a pep talk on the eve of my departure. He was a seasoned traveller through his television work, and on hearing that I had an overnight stopover in Singapore, told me to venture out of the hotel and go to Boogie Street to see something very unusual. He was encouraging and told me he had great faith in my ability to undertake an overseas lecture tour. I had my doubts.