Major departmental policy changes flowed from Suzy’s report. She was eventually transferred to a newly opened office in Redfern. Despite the vast improvement in the quality of service which her presence in this high need area created, Suzy suffered from restrictions which were imposed on her and ultimately she resigned.
It was around this time that Kevin Gilbert was arrested on charges of ‘threatening to kill the Queen’. In the leadup to Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to open the Sydney Opera House, staff at the Australian newspaper received a letter threatening her life. Kevin was subsequently arrested and charged. As he had previously served a life sentence for the murder of his first wife, a white woman, he was in a very disadvantaged position even though he was no longer even on parole.
About a month earlier, with great fanfare, some writer had released a novel about a group, Black October, in which fictional characters did make an assassination attempt during the opening of the Opera House. In the days immediately prior to the opening, many Black community organisers were arrested and detained in police lockups for the duration of the Queen’s visit. We were concerned that police imagined some connection between this novel and real life, but there was little we could do about it.
After the Queen’s departure, Kevin was released on a high bail which he was obliged to borrow from his father-in-law, a fact about which he spoke bitterly. I contacted Dominic Nagle, who was still working at the Australian. Dominic told me that the letter containing the threat had been opened, as were all letters to ‘The Editor’, by a mailboy who sorted the mail by quickly scanning the first few lines then placing them in piles depending on the category. When he’d seen ‘Opera House’, he had assumed the letter to be about music and the arts, and placed it in that pile.
After the letter’s contents had been read by the receiving editor and found to contain a threat, the mailboy had been dispatched to find the envelope in which the letter had arrived. From a heap of discarded envelopes he had pulled one post-marked ‘Newcastle’. Kevin lived in Taree. Apparently that was close enough. Throughout, Kevin maintained his innocence, and there was no physical evidence to link the letter with him. Despite this, he was placed in a position of anxiety and distress for months as he waited for the case to come to trial. Ultimately, however, the charge was abandoned, but not without having taken a grave toll on his health.
As Blacks, we lived with these abuses of power constantly and they caused us all a great deal of stress. I was invited to attend a conference at the World Council of Churches in Switzerland, after which I had arranged to go to another meeting in Nigeria, at the invitation of the planning committee for the Black World Arts and Culture Festival. For three days and nights prior to my departure, a marked police car was stationed directly outside my flat. The police officers made no attempt to molest me as I went about my business, but I was followed everywhere. I interpreted their presence to mean that they wanted me to know I was being watched. But why? When I left to catch my flight, my neighbours later informed me, the police car also left and was not seen again. What did it all mean?
With the pension Suzy had facilitated for me, I had gained a short breather from my financial anxiety. As well as continuing my involvement in educating the public on Black issues, and assisting Black individuals and organisations, I used the break to undertake a video operation course. It was offered to Black students through the then Australian Film and Television School, and was taught by Stuart Littlemore. I also took a short course in multi-camera van operation, but even at the time I realised how unlikely it would ever be for a Black to be entrusted with such expensive equipment.
In November, with Mrs Owen looking after the children, I was free to keep an appointment I had set up with people on Palm Island. At a conference earlier that year in Canberra, I had been approached by Iris Clay, wife of the Chair of the newly created Palm Island Aboriginal Council, which was meant to take over custodianship of the reserve, a former Aboriginal prison settlement. A mainland-based administrator had refused me permission to visit the island when I lived in Townsville. He had rolled a thick truncheon backwards and forwards across his desk while he told me, ‘Blacks on Palm Island can’t have visitors who are not under the Act. They might pick up the idea that they too could come and go as they please.’
Iris explained that big changes were occurring on the island, and that she and her husband, Fred, who was responsible for issuing permits, would welcome me. When I suggested my application for a permit to visit would never get to him as all correspondence was passed through the administration, Iris insisted we set a date immediately and that she and Fred would meet me at the air strip with my permit from the Council in their hands.
Iris was as good as her word. A policeman stationed on the island, who met every plane to check the passengers, snatched the permit as soon as Fred extended it to me, so I never actually got to read it. After a quick trip around to show me the layout of the reserve, we went to their house, one of only a few houses occupied by Blacks in the otherwise ‘white’ area of the settlement.
A line of Black residents immediately began to make their way to the house to meet me and tell me of their complaints. One family brought their son who had been thrashed by a teacher and had savage welt marks down his back and thighs. I suggested Fred take him to the doctor and get a certificate attesting to his injuries so that a formal complaint could be lodged. Fred brought back a simple statement stating the nature of the abrasions but omitting to mention they were consistent with the information given to him by the boy. When I told Fred I felt the doctor’s two-line statement might be insufficient to be used as evidence, I realised that Fred’s literacy skills as well as his procedural knowledge were very limited. Fred and Iris both pleaded with me to consider staying with them for a few months to help.
That night residents staged an impromptu concert to welcome me. Musicians brought their instruments along and set them up on the front porch. For a couple of hours, men, women and children sang and entertained us. Iris was so happy she had some lads shin up a coconut tree and attach a land-rights flag she had hand-sewn, modelled on the flag she had seen at the Embassy in Canberra. Two white female teachers sat on the grass amongst the assembled people throughout the evening, enjoying the good time which was being had by all.
Unbeknown to us, however, other white residents had called for a contingent of police to be flown in from the mainland, and armed vigilantes were summoned from a nearby rig. The whites barricaded themselves in the hospital, after discharging the Aboriginal patients, and armed themselves with all the weapons they could find on the island. Syringes were filled with ether to make flame-throwers. Police stationed marksmen in the surrounding hills, their weapons trained on us during the concert.
We were all fearful about these almost unbelievable developments. I felt a high degree of responsibility and slipped out of the house, making my way to the centre of the town where the only phone available to Blacks was located. I rang Senator Jim Keeffe’s home in Townsville. Senator Keeffe was a well-known and active supporter of the struggle and the Embassy, and I knew him and his wife, Sheila, very well. I told Sheila what was going on and asked her to contact the press in the south. They were to ring me back on that public phone at ten the next morning.
When I returned to wait for these calls, a clerk informed me that the phone was ‘out of order’. For three days we lived in fear, isolated from the outside world, watching the police and other white strangers who were watching us. Some white women were given firearms lessons in the town centre. I carried out investigations into conditions and took photos. On the fourth day I walked into an administration office and asked a clerk how long the phone would be out of order as I wished to ring the charter plane so I could leave. He promised to let me know as soon as it became operable. I had hardly taken two dozen steps down the dusty road when he came running up behind me.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he called. ‘The phone’s fixed now. You can use it.’
I could barely believe how blatantly oppressive the place was, turning the phone off for the entire Black population in order to prevent me contacting journalists and federal politicians. That it was turned on again the moment I signalled my intention to leave confirmed how overtly they were prepared to operate, with complete impunity.
On the mainland I stayed in Margaret and Henry Reynolds’ granny flat in their back garden for a few days. When I returned to the empty house from shopping one afternoon, I discovered all my film had been exposed, including the roll in the camera, which had been removed. ASIO or the police, I thought, were up to their old tricks again.
The Townsville Daily Bulletin carried a series of distorted reports of events on Palm Island, describing it as ‘a riot’ and presenting me in an extremely denigratory manner. The articles alleged, too, that I had brought the land-rights flag, described therein as a ‘black power flag’, up from Canberra. I spoke to Iris on the phone, and she wept. ‘They won’t even give me credit for being able to make a flag myself,’ she sobbed.
I had learned a great deal about Palm Island during my visit. Asked to help residents with nutritional advice, I discovered there were no fresh vegetables (other than onions) or fruit in the government-run store. White residents, who numbered several hundred, had their groceries shipped over from the mainland. Blacks, population just over 1200, had to do without. Known as the ‘butchers’, meat rations were doled out into any plate, bowl or dilly-bag brought by Black residents for the purpose, while white residents’ supplies were hygienically wrapped in white paper. Most Blacks lived in makeshift dwellings without sanitation, while whites, all of whom were government employees and their families, were provided with modern housing which had indoor bathing and toilet facilities, plumbing and electricity.
(In 1995, Tom Collis, a lecturer at Batchelor College in the Northern Territory, introduced himself to me and explained that he had been on Palm Island during my visit. Just out of teachers’ training college, he said, he had been young and believed everything he had been told. ‘I know better now,’ he said in a very embarrassed and contrite manner.)
I was sitting in Townsville airport cafeteria waiting for my flight to Sydney and discussing these recent events and the hostile local media reports with Terry Widders, a Koori colleague from Sydney who had also been visiting on Palm for part of the time I was there, when we were approached by a Palm Island resident who was well under the influence of alcohol and awaiting a flight back to his home. Stumbling up to our table, he snatched a milkshake container and threw most of the contents over my carefully coiffed afro, and proceeded to tell all and sundry in a very loud voice that I was responsible for the ‘trouble’ on the island.
Terry and I had leapt to our feet when we realised we were the target of his assault, and the man made menacing gestures towards Terry with the milkshake container, threatening to dump the rest of the drink over him. Terry, who was at the time employed by a religious institution in Sydney, extended his open hands towards the man in a conciliatory manner, and said, ‘Stop, I am a man of God.’ The man paused, but then continued to berate us both.
Meanwhile the cold milk had seeped through my hair, and white rivulets were running down both sides of my face. An interested crowd had gathered. I stood, dabbing at my collar and face with soggy paper serviettes, and glanced around with some embarrassment. I was surprised to see a handsome young man smiling and waving at me in a very friendly manner. Although he looked vaguely familiar, I didn’t think I knew him, nor did I recognise the attractive young woman with him.
The abusive man was leaving when this pair approached me, somewhat shyly and with an air of apology. ‘You don’t know me, but I’m Johnny Farnham, and I recognise you from the television,’ said the man.
He had, he told me, just been married—he introduced the young woman as his wife—and they were on their way to honeymoon on one of the islands off Townsville on the Great Barrier Reef.
‘This is very upsetting for you,’ he said, gesturing towards the retreating back of the offending man and the crowd of spectators. ‘Would you like to come with us? We’re leaving shortly and it will be a wonderful trip.’ His wife enthusiastically nodded her invitation for me to join them. I thanked them both warmly but declined. I heard the boarding announcement for my flight and, as I was taking my leave, Johnny Farnham pressed me to get in touch with him if I ever saw a way in which he could help with our struggle.
The irony of the whole ludicrous situation struck me only when my Sydney-bound plane was aloft and winging its way down the coast. What a sight I must have made at the airport, and how sympathetic and kind these young people were. An invitation to go on a luxury honeymoon trip, with one of Australia’s top singing stars yet! That this was the only honeymoon I had ever been invited on made the offer even more magical. Following on the heels of the gruelling ordeal of the Palm Island/police fiasco, I burst into tears and loud laughter at the incongruity of it all, much to the chagrin of the flight attendant.
Unbeknown to me, of course, there must have been a reporter amongst the crowd at the airport because a small article about the drunk and my subsequent drenching appeared in the Melbourne Sun, but fortunately no mention of the presence of the new bride and groom. Ever since I have watched from a distance the life and career of John Farnham, as he now likes to be called, and his family, and was amongst the most delighted when he was named Australian of the Year. A man with his sort of heart, I feel, who happily reached out to offer encouragement and assistance to a Black stranger, well deserves all the accolades he has amassed.
I was not back home very long when I received a couple of clippings and a brief note from Mum. A Brisbane newspaper reported what it described as ‘a vitriolic attack’ by the State Member for Townsville, Tom Aikens. Under parliamentary privilege, Mr Aikens, after casting aspersions on my mother’s morals and character, had said about me: ‘I also understand—I believe this to be true because I have checked up on her—that through her Negro father’s connections and family in the United States she is being financed and has been for some time by the powerful and wealthy Black Power movement in that country.’
Describing Fred Clay, Chair of the Aboriginal Council as my chief sponsor for the visit to Palm Island, he continued: ‘If anyone cares to inquire into his record as an Aborigine he will find one long desolate record of bad citizenship, of living in filthy squalid homes, of being chased from one place to another, of leaving loads of debt here and there, and of leaving homes in a filthy condition.’
The Townsville Daily Bulletin further reported Mr Aikens as describing Senator Keeffe thus: ‘I’d not know one man who has done more harm for the Aboriginal cause in Australia than Senator Keeffe.’
He went on to claim that Fred Clay was a ‘pimp and tip-off for Senator Keeffe, and implied it was Fred, not me, who had rung Senator Keeffe’s home during the night from Palm Island.
Unable to sue for defamation as the statements had all been made under parliamentary privilege, Mum had contacted the Sunday Sun. The following week it carried an article which, in part, quoted her as saying that my father was a Negro, and that, far from sending me financial assistance, she had always told me he was dead.
On reading these articles I was so severely shocked that I required medical treatment. Dr Ross McLeod, an AMS general practitioner, tried to talk to me but I became incoherent. When I calmed down I could understand Mum leaping up to defend an attack on her character, but how could she, I thought, have been so naive as to frame her defence in a manner which gave any element of credence to Tom Aikens’ racist ramblings? I also carefully noted that Mum’s own racial background had not been questioned. As long as the papers described her as ‘white’, she wasn’t obliged to clarify and neither did she object.
On my next visit I raised the content of these articles with Mum. ‘There are people out there who intend to kill you, and if you’re too stupid to protect yourself, I have to do it for you,’ she told me. She would say nothing m
ore.
During my next visit to Townsville to speak at James Cook University College, another attempt was made on my life and the lecturer who organised my trip, Mr Noel Loos, arranged security for me, accommodating me at his own home rather than in a motel.
I did not speak to the media about any of these things at the time, for many reasons. From experience, I distrusted journalists’ interpretation of anything I said. I felt sure the public would see Tom Aikens’ ravings for what they were. I was also not prepared to say anything about my mother’s motives in contacting the press and making a statement. If she wished to carry on with her pretence, that was her own business. I, too, had my secret, a carefully guarded secret I did not want to be put in the position of having to disclose. Perhaps, in the future, I would also have to carry into the public arena a fantasy background for my own child.
Throughout the period in which I knew her, MumShirl constantly urged me to accompany her to prisons. I was very reluctant, even to please her. My experience as a victim of criminal violence had left me with a narrow view of the types of people who end up in gaols. As well, I realised that prisoners generally related to MumShirl as a ‘mother-figure’, an older woman of solid stature with whom they were prepared to show contrition and emotion. But I doubted very much that they would choose to relate to me in the same way.
I had purchased a little car for $900 at an auction, a Morris Nomad, and MumShirl frequently imposed upon me to take her here and there, because she didn’t drive. In this way, she increasingly involved me in her work, which is how I came to find myself in gaols, first at Long Bay and later at Parramatta. The high thick walls, grates, towers, armed guards and iron bars appalled me, and gradually I gained a greater appreciation of the many difficulties prisoners face in their isolation.
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