Biography, Politics, Source

Soaring with Eagles – Part 2

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’.)

Biography, Politics, Source

Soaring with Eagles – Part 1

Oh sure, Mum pissed me off at times, as she cautioned me against this and that. That I needed to relax, was still too highly strung, needed to slow down, stop impressing ‘the snows’ (which is what she called whitefells) and told me to believe in God. At the time, this was a bit too much for me, especially the remarks about God, as I was a card-carrying Marxist and hell bent on changing the world. When I did object, she’d tell me I was getting a bit too big for my boots and would cut the conversation short by saying: ‘I don’t know what they teach you at uni, Lillian, but it certainly isn’t manners!’

Biography, Politics, Source, Women's History

Taking Control Now – Part 2

When I walked into the Commonwealth Bank in Darwin, telling them I had worked in the bank down south, I got a job instantly. The resistance was in the south. I worked on ledgers, work I had never done. I remained for a year, returning south in 1971. In 1972 the Aboriginal tent embassy was set up in Canberra. There was an explosion of pride in being Aboriginal.

Biography, Politics, Source, Women's History

The Women’s Time Has Arrived – Part 2

Notices in the sisters’ home and dining room of the Thursday Island Hospital declared: ‘Nursing sisters must not attend coloured Islanders’ parties or homes. They must not travel in unauthorised vessels.’ In the 1950s and early 1960s the hospital’s decisions were greatly influenced by the Thursday Island tennis club. The self-appointed cream of Thursday Island society (all white) were members until ‘the tone deteriorated’, because black people were learning to play tennis. A bowling club was formed and anybody who classed themselves above the black Torres Strait Islanders joined. Today, it’s just an ordinary bowling club. All the power people believed they projected has been diminishing since the Whitlam government of the 1970s came to power and gave status recognition to the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.