In 1962, on flying the coop at age 17, wanting to explore and implore the bright lights, big cities, big living, I went to Brisbane to work for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), which was my first job. Lillian Roth once said her life was never her own, it was charted before she was born. Boy, you’d better believe it. Within a month or two I met an Englishwoman who had lived in India for 11 years and had vowed, after the spirit and vivacity of India, never to return to her homeland. She was looking to fill the void, and found it through workign voluntarily with fledgling Aboriginal organisations adn people. At the time I didn’t really know this, it is only in retrospect, but on first encounter she hugged me like a daughter and I was to become like a daughter, for she became my second Mum, my ‘migloo Mum’, for want of a better word. (‘Migloo’ is a Queensland Aboriginal term for ‘whitefella’.) I can still remember meeting her, in 1962, in the office of the state director of Aboriginal affairs in Brisbne. She was and still is an incredibly tactile person, embracing me and owning me like one of her own brood. From there on in, we became ‘attached’. That was 13 years ago. Little did I know that this bold, tactile encounter, which (not being a very tactile person myself) I shrank from, was the beginning of a beguiling bond lasting to this day.
I don’t think either of us knew what we were getting into. As with all ‘families’, the arguments began, mostly over the fact that she thought I was wasting my life, being a wage slave. and that I should develop ‘that brilliant, absorbant brain’ and DO SOMETHING with my life. So, after a few years, and being the ‘people pleaser’ I was then, I went back to do my matriculation. She ‘hustled’ a rich woman she knew to pay my fees so I could do so. Not that I knew about this surreptitous activity on her part, so when I kept saying I couldn’t afford to become a ‘mature’ student at the age of 22, she replied: ‘Oh yes, you can, I have arranged it all.’ So off I trotted. Did my matric in one year and then signed up for university.
She said she was sent to Australia to be my ‘hair-coat’. How true! She fired me up and shot me down! She was a feminist before it became fashionable and remonstrated at me about the ‘need to have a man on my arm’ instead of developing my mental capacities, saying that I could do anything I wanted to, if I set myself to the task. She believed violently and passionately in my capabilities and capacities, at a time when I wasn’t even aware of them.
She introduced me to a different world. So many cosmopolitan, ‘very educated’ (in my view, at the time) diverse people, from all walks of life and from all over the world, visited and she entertained them with her generosity. I was always included. But there was nothing snobbish about it, for her circle of people was diverse, with many worldly, yet unlettered, unfettered and uncluttered people traversing her premises, also. I met many, many, interesting people through her, from diplomats to dreamers to derelicts (the latter word is not meant to be derogatory). She had a magnetic and energetic personality and was, most assuredly, a ‘people person’.
Little did I know it, but as she introduced me to others and their thoughts and values, I was also being introduced to myself. The discussions were homely and vigorous, particularly between her and me. She was a Shakespeare fanatic and explained away my confusion in that area. She’d throw quotations and words my way and I’d ask her what it meant. She’d explain so that I never felt dumb – just enlightened. She encouraged and inspired me, with my university assignments, as we sipped tea and discussed the ins and outs, pros and cons of my assignment.
Twenty and more years ago I had a most vile fight with her in her loungeroom where she sat, legs folded, sipping a cup of tea whilst she dropped a clanger in my lap by saying: ‘I think you will need to examine seriously the proposition that you hate women.’ I frothed frenetically, denied, revived and cursed her then left. Went away wounded, bent on my revenge, and ‘sulked’ as she stayed on my mental hit list.
But not for long; her delicious curries brought me back. They were as scintilating as her conversation and concern. I have conceded, given time, that she was right about my being a women hater. Ouch! That truth hurt along with the many other things said to me in the form of tough love. Well, today, I still love that woman. We keep in touch by telephone …
Another woman was high in the ascendant, at the same time as Mrs L. This was my Aunty Rita. She was another who was to make indelible footprints on my heart. A blood relation, a woman of passion and compassion, she took me under her wing and into her household the moment I planted my feet in the ‘big city’ (to me at the time!) of Brisbane, 1962. I was 17, fresh, raw, naive and frisky, exploring this new found world of mine. So where else do you go when, as a young Aboriginal woman,you also want to belong’. To your relations of course. My Aunty Rita filled that void. She welcomed me with open arms, into her often hectic and chaotic household, where all were welcome, including all our other relations.
She provided more than a home for me. She provided her heart. She felt, she cried, she laughed, she danced. Many a time, we did this together, sometimes just through sitting around and yarning (which was an activity rather than a boredom). Aunty Rita was earthy, uncluttered and classy. She was my role model for style. Someone once said that style and class are a bit like humility and spirtuality – either you’ve got it or you haven’t and if you have, you don’t have to go around broadcasting it. Well, Aunty Rita had ‘IT’. An indefinable essence which came from just being herself. She could adorn herself with clothes of many colours that would either clash or look insipid on others. But not on her! Oh, no, they became alive and alert, just as she was. She brought colour and personality to her clothes and to those she met.
More importantly, Aunty Rita was a dreamer. She always had plans for life and was always about to embark on something exotic. As with all of us, they often did not materialise, but I loved and partook of that zest for life. She shared it and passed it on to me.
Later, in my travels in and out of Brisbane there was always a bed and a feed for me awaiting at Aunty Rita’s, often without ritual of writing – just turning up. If there wasn’t room, she’d MAKE room.To try to pinpoint exactly her generosity is like trying to describe the taste of icecream to someone who has not tasted it. her generosity was just THERE. Encompassing, pervasive, loving. To me, she was one of those older, Aboriginal matriachs, who cared and shared. To say more would be to denude the essence …
Lillian Holt (c) 1996
Born on 17 February 1945 at Cherbourg, Queensland, Lillian Holt is a tireless worker for the rights of Indigenous Australians, particularly in the field of education. As Director of the Centre for Indigenous Education at the University of Melbourne she continued her life-time work in the education field. She is a Fellow of the University of Melbourne.
This is an excerpt from ‘Soaring with Eagles’, published in Living Generously – Women Mentoring Women, Artemis Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 1992 (Jocelynne A. Scutt, ed.).
