Ten Doors Down

by Tickner, Robert;

  I think my mother largely shared my father’s conservative political views in the early days, but her way of relating to people was very special. She was respected by all because she treated others with respect, whatever their background or role in life, and while she might sometimes have appeared a little distant, no one could fail to see her kindness towards everyone she dealt with. She certainly never shared my father’s prejudiced views about Aboriginal people, and encouraged me to be on good terms with the Aboriginal kids in my school and their families in the town.

  My mother instilled the values of fairness and kindness in me from my earliest years, and the thought that I might see myself as better than others would have been anathema to her. Because of her, I have always detested elitist, arrogant, or bullying behaviour, and since early high school I’ve also had a strong commitment to social justice and humanitarian values. I still have the passionate article I wrote for the school magazine when I was 18, in which I champion humanitarian principles and express concern about the threat of nuclear weapons to the people of the world.

  Before my adoption reunion, I believed it was the huge influence of my mother on me, her nurturing, which created the humanitarian values that I regard as the very essence of my being. And I believed that it was my father’s influence that contributed to my high energy levels, strong conscience, and commitment to try to make the world a better place. The future was to reveal that life was far more complex indeed.

  3

  Leaving the nest

  For kindergarten and primary school, I attended Forster Central School — a small local-district school only five doors away from our house in Lake Street. The primary school was tiny, with only about 30 kids in my entire year, so we were a close-knit group. I grew up relating to kids who lived very different lives to me, including the Aboriginal kids in my class. Almost all of them lived on the ‘Aboriginal Reserve’. They were mostly from the Worimi people, whose lands included the Great Lakes regions and extended right down to Port Stephens.

  Once I’d finished primary school, Forster High School was a ten-minute bike ride from home, and fronted the ocean. It only went up to Year 10, but I spent four wonderful years there. During those years in our little country school, I loved my studies, my friends, and my sports, and I was honoured to be made school captain.

  Mum and Dad always encouraged me to study, although they’d left school early themselves, as many of their generation had done. I did relatively well, partly because of their encouragement, but also due to my own self-motivation and a degree of competitiveness. This competitive streak probably developed as a response to being beaten by a succession of girls in my class, starting in primary school with my friend Terry, who still taunts me about it now. Maths was never a strength for me, but my greatest weaknesses were spelling and handwriting. In all my academic life, I only ever failed one subject, and it was spelling-related. My teachers accused me of using my appalling writing to cover up my bad spelling, but it wasn’t deliberate — at least not until they suggested it. I realised how helpful this trick could be, and in later life I perfected the technique so as to cover up my occasional embarrassment when it came to trying to spell a word I didn’t know. I also frequently reversed numbers, which led me to wonder at times whether I might be mildly dyslexic. Perhaps this is the reason that much of my life’s work has involved talking for a living!

  One of my favourite subjects was history, both in primary school and at high school, although in hindsight I can see that my classmates and I were poorly served by the curriculum of the day. That curriculum focused on English kings and queens, and had a very limited treatment of Australian history: I wasn’t taught one jot about anything to do with the history of Aboriginal people in my area or their rich cultural history as representatives of the First Australians. I still have on my shelf the official New South Wales school history textbook from 1967 — my Year 10 Higher School Certificate year and, more importantly, the historic year of the referendum recognising Aboriginal citizenship and approving the expansion of the Commonwealth government’s role in Aboriginal affairs. This government-issued textbook is almost criminal in its content, purveying the most awful, prejudiced views to young minds. It describes Aboriginal people as a ‘problem’ due to their loss of ‘the high moral and ethical traits of their ancestors’ and because they had ‘also failed to accept the white man’s moral and legal codes’. They were ‘lazy individuals, apparently devoid of morals, and always prepared to lie, cheat or steal’. By the time we got to Year 10, most of my Aboriginal classmates had sadly dropped out of school, but for the few who remained, this book must have been excruciating. How repugnant to read such a grossly unfounded and shocking description of themselves and their families.

  Whole generations of Australian schoolkids were subjected to this appalling and inaccurate portrayal of the First Australians. A little over 23 years later, after I became the minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in 1990, I would launch the National Reconciliation and Schooling Strategy to ensure that all Australian students would have the opportunity to learn the true history of our country, and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture, which is such a great gift to all of us.

  My parents weren’t wealthy, but would have been best described as comfortably middle class, living a quiet and modest lifestyle. Nevertheless, they wanted to send me to The King’s School in Sydney — first when I finished primary school, and then again when I finished at Forster High School and needed to find somewhere else for Years 11 and 12. In fact, they told me that they’d booked my place. The thought of going away to boarding school was miserable to me, and I was adamant that I didn’t want to go. To this day, I am so pleased that I resisted, and I’m even happier that my will was allowed to prevail. Growing up as a country kid and attending local schools was one of the great experiences of my life, although I only truly recognised this in hindsight.

  Taree High was a much larger school, and, although I was chuffed to be made vice-captain not long after arriving there, at first I found it hard and felt like a Forster-fish out of water. Some of the teachers looked upon — or should I say, looked down upon — us Forster kids as interlopers who brought the subversive surfing culture to the school. I was caught up in that perception in the beginning and had to fight my way past it to undertake higher levels in my chosen subjects for the Higher School Certificate.

  I will admit there may have been some validity to the teachers’ paranoia about an insidious Forster surfing culture. I vividly remember sitting in English classes at Forster High beside a surfboard-riding buddy, Robert Willis, and giving every impression of paying rapturous attention to our English teacher, Mr Dark, as he delivered his lesson. In fact, Robert and I had developed a creative technique of imagining that the wall behind Mr Dark was a breaking wave. Every English class we rode that wave in our minds, which we could easily do for the entire length of the class. It certainly made Chaucer much more interesting.

  I did well in my Year 12 Higher School Certificate, and the time came to choose a future career direction. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I had an interest in politics. Aged 18, I was aware of the damage that governments could do, as well as their capacity to do good and help build a better world. Although my views at the time were relatively unformed, I confided to a trusted friend that one day I wanted to be prime minister. No one could accuse me of not being ambitious!

  Whatever I was to become, I had no choice but to leave home if I was going to pursue university study. At first I thought I could do good in the world by studying medicine, and I explored this possibility in an inconclusive conversation with Dr Sanders. But in the end, my loathing of mathematics and chemistry put me off the medical path. At Taree High, I had enjoyed debating and had won the declamation competition; this made me feel confident that I would make a good advocate, and so I chose to study law. That choice meant there was only on
e university to go to — Sydney — as there was no other law school in the state at that time.

  I didn’t have any family I could stay with long-term in Sydney, and none of my close friends from Forster were heading there, so sharing a house wasn’t an option. Instead, I was encouraged by my Taree High School English teacher, Mrs Willis, to consider living at St Paul’s College within the University of Sydney, where her sons had also lived. On her recommendation, Mum and Dad took me to meet the college warden, Reverend Bennie, for an interview. At the start of 1970, I took up a place in the college after a few short weeks of interim accommodation with my Aunty Dorrie, my father’s younger sister, and her husband, my Uncle Les, who also happened to live in Merrylands — the same suburb where my mother’s mother lived.

  The sandstone college of St Paul’s was founded in 1856 and is Australia’s oldest university college. I found it to be a blokey place, with an elite private-school-oriented culture. In 1973, I attended a college dinner where Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, a former college resident, returned as a guest speaker. As part of his speech, he said to the assembled college fraternity in his imperious and lofty tones, ‘Your fathers helped shape my political views.’ It was a barbed comment I could resoundingly endorse, adding under my breath, ‘As their sons did mine.’

  In my day, well over 90 per cent of the college residents came from the most exclusive non-Catholic private schools. Coming from a country government school as I did, I found many of the other residents wanted nothing to do with me. Walking back from the college library to my room late at night along the cold sandstone corridors, I would often pass someone going the other direction and offer a ‘Hi, mate’ as an opener. Usually, the response was silence or at most a perfunctory grunt. This was an experience shared by others from state schools. To be fair, it could also have had something to do with the ‘fresher system’, wherein first-year students were treated contemptuously as part of their indoctrination, but, whatever the cause, the result was that I was desperately lonely during my time there.

  I had walked in the door of St Paul’s as a naive country kid, excited to meet new people. When, after a couple of years of trying to make it work, I eventually moved into a flat by myself in Croydon, I was glad to get away from the snobbery of my college peers and into the wider world. Of course, with the passing of the years, people mellow, and I now consider some of those offenders to be good friends — although not too many of them are aligned with the Labor side of politics.

  During my first three months at St Paul’s College, I was to experience an event that I believe contributed to shaping my direction in life. As a teenager, like many other boys, I had developed a love of fast cars, and my father provided me with a Datsun 1600 from his car yard to drive to university. I assume that he and Mum thought I would be more likely to get back to see them in Forster regularly if I had a reliable car. Unfortunately, it was also a very fast and high-performing car for its class, and I knew what it was capable of, as Dad had driven me to school on numerous occasions in the same model.

  In the first three months of 1970, I drove to Forster each weekend from Sydney to see my family and my friend Beth. In those days, it was a much longer trip on long and often winding single-lane roads. One Sunday night after one of these visits, I picked up a new-found friend, Peter Riddell, who was also living in St Paul’s College, to return to Sydney. Just before we headed off, Peter’s father, Gordon, stuck his head in the window for some friendly farewell banter.

  ‘Looks like your seatbelt’s coming loose,’ he told Peter. ‘The bolt’s about to fall out. We need to fix that.’

  I was annoyed, as I just wanted to get on the road for the seven-hour drive back to Sydney. ‘It’s been like that for a while,’ I said. ‘I think it’s okay.’

  Thankfully, Peter’s dad wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘I’m going to get a spanner. It’ll only take a moment.’

  We finally set off ten minutes later, and picked up another friend, Kaye Fitness. We dropped her off at Lochinvar, near Newcastle, which was lucky for her. Less than an hour later, going over 140 kilometres per hour, we took a corner, and I misjudged the angle and speed of the car. The Datsun flipped and rolled, and then continued to roll, overturning five or more times. We could hear the deafening crunch of metal on asphalt, and saw sparks and flashes of light flying around us, until finally, after about 40 seconds, the car came to a stop in the silence of the Australian bush. The Datsun was upside down, and had gone over the edge of a bridge. Peter and I were still in our seats, hanging upside down in creek bed, held in by only our seatbelts. We scrambled to release ourselves and get out of the upturned car. Both of us were extremely lucky to have survived. In an instant, we had been transformed from two bulletproof, invincible, testosterone-driven teenagers in a high-powered car into a pair of vulnerable prisoners, trapped in an uncontrollable, flimsy tin can, as it catapulted along until its energy, and nearly our lives, were exhausted. And there is no doubt that Peter would not have survived but for his father fixing his seatbelt before we set off from Forster.

  The car was written off, and I was still getting glass out of my hair days later. I also had to suffer the ignominy of phoning my parents 150 kilometres away, waking them from their Sunday-night slumber to ask them to collect their reckless and irresponsible son from the Kurri Kurri Police Station. The accident was a huge wake-up call for me, and the near-death experience made me think hard about what was important in life. I understood that not only had I just barely cheated death, but I had also nearly killed a friend in the process. I realised that life was fragile, and I didn’t want my life to be about striving for wealth and material possessions. What I really cared about was the love of people, including, of course, my family and friends. The accident was the catalyst for my becoming a much more compassionate person.

  My growing awareness that I’d been living in a selfish, materialistic way was compounded by an event three days later, when I returned to St Paul’s College to resume my studies. I had never been a church-goer, but I was still fragile and deeply reflective about what had just happened, and so I decided to take some time out in the small college chapel. I had always loved the design of this chapel, with its walls behind the altar emblazoned with hundreds of multi-coloured glass stones. They came to life when the sun shone on them, as it did that day in my moment of solitude.

  I sat there for a long time, quietly thinking about our close escape. Absentmindedly — and most uncharacteristically — I picked up a Bible, which had been left on the pew in front of me. I randomly flipped it open, and my eyes fell on these words: ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ I couldn’t believe what I was reading. To me, it was a validation of my renunciation of the mindless pursuit of material possessions, which had occupied my thinking since the crash. I didn’t see this moment as a religious experience or revelation, but for a very shaken up 18-year-old, it was a coincidence that affirmed the direction I wanted to take in life. To focus on doing what I could, in my own modest way, to contribute to building a better world.

  As an aside, I want to note that I have only had one other substantial car accident in my life. The second took place only six months after the first, when I crashed into a taxi on Elizabeth Street in Sydney, as I was about to turn into Hunter Street. Peter Riddell was in the car with me then, too, and I accused him of being a jinx. He insisted it was me, and I admit that the weight of evidence was on his side.

  4

  Moving into politics

  Outside college, my life was dominated by a demanding and highly competitive law course. I had embarked on a straight four-year law degree, skipping a preliminary arts degree, because, at the time, I wanted to go back to the country to live — I couldn’t see my future in the city. I made some good friends at law school, including my best friend, Wendy Steed. I ended up being an articled clerk to Wendy’s father, and became clo
se friends with her mother, Rita. Tragically, Wendy was killed in a car accident when she was 26. I continued to visit her mother every Christmas for decades.

  I’d become interested in politics before I left home for university, although my views had marked a sharp divide from the political views of my father, who was a member of the then-named Country Party, which would later become the National Party. After many years as a member, Dad resigned because it was too left-wing for him! I think his basic philosophy was that he’d had to struggle in life for his achievements, and he thought others should, too. It was a kind of survival-of-the-fittest approach to life in some ways, although my father was, in his heart, a kind and good person. My mother did not have any overt political views, but she always gave me the impression that she also voted for the National Party. She was, however, a deeply empathetic person who hated to see people hurting, and she had some sensitivity towards the Aboriginal population of the town.

  I attended my first political demonstration in July 1971, right out the front of the Sydney Town Hall. It was a protest against the visiting South African Springbok Rugby team . My own political views were starting to take shape. I must have been still under my father’s influence to a certain extent, however, because I also joined the Sydney University Liberal Club. It was connected to, but not part of, the Liberal Party, of which I was never a member. I was still very politically immature at that time, with unformed values, but joining this club was a tentative step towards exploring political parties. Through the club, I had the opportunity to meet Don Chipp, Andrew Peacock, and other senior Liberals of the time, although certainly none of them would have ever remembered me from those days.