Not Just Black and White

by Lesley Williams

  Our regimented life on Cherbourg had left little room for individuality and self-expression. So I was surprised to see girls in the city wearing teeny-tiny dresses, with hemlines shortened to the thigh. Others opted to express themselves by wearing shirts with bright splashes of colour designed to catch the eye, like psychedelic swirls and dizzying prints. And unlike the short-back-and-sides haircuts required of our men on the settlement by the white officials, out here on the streets I couldn’t believe some males voluntarily grew their hair long and unkempt.

  Like any other young person, I wanted to fit in. I knew I had stood out for all the wrong reasons – not least because of my frumpy, high-waisted, government-issue cotton frocks. With Andrée’s expert fashion advice, this was soon fixed. She went through her wardrobe picking out outfits I could borrow because they suited my (then) slender figure. Andrée also shared tips on make-up and how to wear my hair – teased up into a beehive, or long and straight, with a part down the middle.

  Next in line for her expert attention were my eyebrows. What a mess I’d made of them! I overdid it with the tweezers and went way too thin, turning my unruly brows into patchy half-moons, with neither arch matching the other. It took decades for the bloody hairs to grow back to their original thickness – forcing me to wear my sixties-styled brows well into the 1980s.

  As good as my life was, living and working with Andrée, it wasn’t without guilt. In the back of my mind I kept thinking of my family at home in Cherbourg and wondered at how life could be so different for them and me. Even as a child I’d known blackfullas were treated differently from whitefullas. From beneath the branches of Grandfather Chambers’ bunya tree on the edge of the Camp’s boundary, I’d looked enviously at the white officials’ large colonial-style homes, over in the out-of-bounds area. How could I not notice the difference in living standards? And now, I realised, I was living inside one of those ‘white official’ type houses – although on a far grander scale – but without my family.

  I felt like I’d betrayed my mob, as though I’d somehow crossed over to the ‘other side’ and was living like the white officials do, while my mob was left behind. This shocked me, and I felt bad for actually enjoying all of the good things I had in my life. I also worried what other blackfullas would think, seeing me enjoying the good life and its opportunities, while most of them went without. But, then, there was a part of me that didn’t want to give it up either – to go back to the way I was treated at Taroom or by the white officials in Cherbourg.

  Why me? Why did I have the chance to live like this, while someone like Granny didn’t? Life wasn’t fair. Living in the world outside of Cherbourg revealed the scale of the unfairness. All I would do was hope that the money and presents I sent back home would help close this divide, and relieve my guilt.

  Conscious of what others thought, I’d go to great lengths to make sure I didn’t get too carried away by my fortunate surroundings. I preferred to catch public transport into the city on my days off, rather than accept a lift from Andrée’s father, who often visited his daughter.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Les – Dad has to drive into the city anyway,’ Andrée would insist, assuming I was being polite and not wanting to inconvenience her elderly father.

  ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ her father would say, while unlocking his black Rolls-Royce parked in the driveway.

  Reluctantly, I’d accept the offer, only to slink down into the soft leather seat, hoping no one I knew would see me. Even city folk I didn’t know would stare suspiciously at a rich elderly gentleman dropping a young black girl off by the side of the road. I had an image of how blackfullas, like me, should be seen. I felt that I didn’t belong in a big flash house or deserve to ride around in a flash car.

  It was at times like this that I missed home most, being alongside Granny in the Camp. I missed the sense of belonging and feeling I fitted in. By 1968, more so than ever, my longing for home grew. In that year, the news was beamed by television into Andrée’s lounge room of not just one but two ruthless assassinations in the United States – first of Dr Martin Luther King and then of Senator Robert Kennedy. It was only five years earlier that Robert Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated too. In these dreadful moments, I began to understand that the world was much wider than Cherbourg’s boundaries, and the ‘outside world’ was not confined to Murgon, Condamine, Taroom, Brisbane and the other Australian towns I’d visited. It stretched, via the television screen, to other parts of the globe.

  Until I arrived at Andrée’s, I didn’t have much to do with television. Certainly no one in the Camp owned a TV set, and Mrs Brodie had never invited me to join her family in the lounge room to watch any shows. And so, with such limited exposure, I hadn’t been prepared to see and hear the tragedies and disasters reported on the news every other day. It made me frightened to know there were bad people in the world around me, people who would kill those they disagreed with. For all my complaints about how the white officials controlled and limited our contact with those beyond Cherbourg’s boundaries, I almost felt I missed their ‘protection’ from such bad people in this world of ‘outside’.

  In July 1968, a month after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, our beloved Granny died. I’d been dreading this moment since childhood. She was such a constant and reliable presence in our lives that it seemed impossible to think of our family without her.

  On hearing the news, I applied to the white officials for permission to return to Cherbourg for her funeral. Although Andrée was supportive of my bereavement and understood the need for me to be away from my duties, the white officials were less so – granting permission to be with my family for only a single day. It wasn’t enough, but at least it was something. My older sister Sandra worked so far away that she didn’t get to attend our much-loved grandmother’s funeral at all.

  Granny’s funeral, though a great woman and faithful churchgoer, was without religious fanfare. She was buried in the wedding dress of her daughter, my birth mother, which she had stored for many years. There was no church service or drawn-out burial, just a verse from the Bible by the graveside. Then, with a blessing from the minister, everyone threw a handful of dirt onto her coffin and her grave was covered. Her life, so long and full, had ended with such little fuss.

  I remained with my family, huddled by her graveside, to say the last of our goodbyes. The westerly winds, so typical of the winter months, dried my tears. I knew I would miss her – the flickering glow of her pipe, the smell of Vicks VapoRub, the sound of her shuffling across the floorboards to check on her sleeping grandchildren. I wished the lotions and potions she used to take could have kept her strong, kept her alive forever. But there we had to leave her – in the shadow of a towering gum tree, a few plots away from where Grandfather had been laid to rest.

  I walked down the hill to the Camp, towards our house, which I’d always called home. In a matter of minutes my lift would arrive to take me back to Brisbane. From the front veranda I hoped to see a willie wagtail, Granny’s favourite bird, fluttering busily nearby. I needed to see something to remind me of our dear grandmother. But there were only the usual goings-on in the Camp, as life continued on without her.

  When I arrived back at our old house, I saw a large metal box pushed up against the veranda wall. It was my father’s old army chest. He’d given it to Granny when he returned home from the war and she always stored it at the foot of her bed. Her life’s mementos, including my mother’s wedding dress, had always been tucked away inside. She secured the tin box with a lock, to make sure no one helped themselves to its contents, and kept the key on a piece of string safely around her neck. I have childhood memories of her airing its contents every once in a while. Sandra, Alex and I would sit and quietly listen as she’d explain the origins of each item. Some were presents and little trinkets she’d received from her children and grandchildren.

  Some of the pieces weren�
��t hers, but she had been asked to look after them by other people, until they found a safe place of their own. With weekly house inspections by the white officials, there weren’t many places where we could hide our sentimental items – as the Protection Act gave the officials the power to seize and confiscate the property of any Aboriginal person. Without Granny’s watchful eye, her tin box and its contents were no longer safe. Her life had barely ended when I found the box had been opened and many of her precious keepsakes taken.

  The culprit wasn’t a white official, or some cunning thief. I was shocked to realise it must have been members of our own extended family who were responsible for ransacking her tin box. Well before the funeral, while her body still lay in the morgue, they’d rummaged through her belongings, as if it were a fire sale, taking whatever they could find before anyone else could grab them. They even stole my debutante dress and its accessories, including my tiara and necklace. I’d busted my guts working out at Condamine to buy those. And with one swoop it was all gone.

  Not much had been left in the box; it had been picked over like bones left on a carcass. There were some old letters and photographs but many of these were creased and ruffled by the bargain-hunters’ rough handling. As I went to shut the lid, I noticed a corner of blue fabric. Buried beneath the photos and papers was the brunch coat I had given Granny the previous Christmas. Sadly, that had been the last time I had seen her alive. I lifted the brunch coat out and clutched it tightly against my chest. I wished, more than anything, it was Granny I could hold onto instead.

  How could it have come to this? That members of our own family could act like vultures? When did we lose our traditions of respecting the dead? Only ten years earlier, when Grandfather passed, the entire settlement was shrouded in a mournful silence. Then, for weeks afterwards, no one dared to utter his name or touch his possessions, out of respect for his death.

  Life in the Camp had changed so much from what I’d remembered from my childhood. Many of those I knew and had grown up with no longer lived there – some had died young; others had been forced to live elsewhere because of work. Although our cottage in the Camp still had half a dozen or so family members squashed under one roof, it felt empty without Granny inside it. It hurt to realise that I had to let go of my fond childhood memories. I would soon be taken back to Brisbane, just as the white officials had ordered.

  Cherbourg would always be my sentimental home, but whether I liked it or not, I no longer felt I wanted to stay. I had to make a life for myself, out there on the outside.

  Chapter 13

  Tammy

  The 1960s ended about a decade before I was born, but as I matured, and learned more about our history – and about the law – I read with great interest about the ‘liberation’ movements of this era. I became fascinated by the struggles of other minority groups and the impact of those on the rights of my own people in Australia during this time – in particular the historic 1967 ‘Aboriginal Referendum’ and the campaign to remove the discriminatory references to Aboriginal people in the national Constitution. Thought I’m not an expert in the area, this is my understanding of the events surrounding the historic referendum.

  As the tide of the civil rights movement swept across the world and reached Australia, many Australians remained ignorant that the nation’s Constitution still reflected the outdated, eighteenth-century views of its founding fathers towards Aboriginal people. When it was drafted in 1901, one of the concerns was that, by including Aboriginal people in a census, those states that had large Aboriginal populations, like Queensland and Western Australia, could be allocated more House of Representative seats in parliament, and possibly receive extra per capita funds from the Commonwealth. To overcome this problem the Constitution prohibited the counting of Aboriginal people – the country’s first inhabitants – in ‘reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth’.

  There was another provision in the original Constitution that was also discriminatory towards Aboriginal people. Its section 51(xxvi), in practical terms, meant that ‘special laws’ for people of the Aboriginal race were made by the states; so for the next sixty years the welfare of Aboriginal people was under the control of state governments, like Queensland with its draconian Aboriginal Protection Act.

  As other ethnic-minority and marginalised groups worldwide began achieving some success in campaigns for their civil rights, community activists in Australia were prompted to wage their own public campaigns to improve the conditions of Aboriginal people. Many believed progress would be achieved only if the federal rather than state governments had some control over the policies that had for so long discriminated against Aboriginal and Islander Australians. Without the federal government taking a lead policy role, some argued, the basic health and socio-economic outcomes of Indigenous Australians would continue to vary greatly throughout the country, depending on which state they happened to live in.

  A national referendum was held in May 1967, giving Australians the opportunity to decide whether to remove the discriminatory references to Aboriginal people from the Constitution. In the lead-up to the referendum, those campaigning in favour of constitutional change sought to appeal to the public’s conscience, with posters bearing the slogan ‘Right wrongs, write yes for Aborigines on 27 May’. In an historic result, the overwhelming majority of Australians did agree to the constitutional changes.

  Many in the community, including the media, believed that Aboriginal people would now enjoy equal rights and freedoms, and their living conditions would significantly improve. But it was not to be. For several years after the referendum the federal government failed to use its new constitutional powers. Although 90.77 per cent of Australian voters had supported the removal of the two discriminatory sections of the nation’s Constitution, the federal government didn’t seize this remarkably positive moment to effect change, leaving many greatly disappointed. But other community leaders understood that the massive ‘Yes’ vote was an important symbol, and capitalised on this goodwill by continuing grassroots campaigning for the civil rights of Aboriginal Australians.

  Lesley

  I didn’t realise this was what the so-called Aboriginal Referendum of 1967 was about; otherwise, I wouldn’t have got my hopes up. Without having anyone to explain it to me, I blindly relied on the word of others. I can now see that most people back then were just as confused and misinformed as me. When the results of the referendum became known, people, including me, misunderstood that the changes to the Constitution meant blackfullas would ‘soon be free’ and would have ‘the same rights’ as everyone else. But this wasn’t the case.

  What I didn’t understand then, but have come to learn now, was despite the outcome of the national referendum, the state and territory parliaments throughout Australia would continue to have power to make laws for Aboriginal people living in their state. Because the Aboriginal Protection Act was a state law, and not a federal one, the Queensland Government would continue to control and place restrictions on my life until the law was changed.

  I can now appreciate that the 1967 referendum was an important symbol that eventually prompted change in government policy, but, in 1967, the referendum had little impact on my day-to-day life. I was a young adult then – twenty-one years of age – and yet, I was still considered a ‘ward of the state’. Unlike other Australians, we blackfullas were considered not capable of making our own decisions, and therefore had to remain ‘under the care and protection’ of the Queensland Government simply because of our Aboriginality. For all the hoopla surrounding the all-important Aboriginal Referendum, it simply came and went, with no immediate or obvious change to my life.

  And so, what I remember most about May 1967 wasn’t the historic changes to our country’s Constitution but, rather, the news seemed to be more focused on the marriage of Priscilla and Elvis Presley. At that time in my life a celebrity wedding caused me more excitement because I didn’t understand wh
at the referendum was about.

  On paper I might not have had many rights but my standard of living had nonetheless improved. This had come about not by any change in government policy or law, nor through a national referendum, but through my friendship with Andrée. Looking back, I wonder how my life would’ve turned out if I hadn’t had the good fortune of being employed by her, and had instead been placed in the employment of a less caring and less fair person? I can now see that my time with Andrée was a defining moment in building my character; and that the practical life skills she taught me helped make up for my lack of formal education.

  Our ritual most mornings was that we shared the housework; so in the afternoons, there was often time to play board games, like checkers and Scrabble, before the kids and her husband arrived home. Besides the obvious social benefits, these games improved my vocabulary and spelling. Our daily competitions also taught me how to think strategically, especially to think ahead and plan the next move – skills necessary to win on the board and, later I’d learn, also in life.

  With time and Andrée’s patience, my nervous stutter started to correct itself and I started to speak more fluently. This made me less self-conscious about the way I talked, helping me to relax and become less guarded around her family and friends. Although I had an understanding that blackfullas like me did not have the same rights as other Australians, I did feel I was lucky to be working for Andrée. I knew better than to get carried away and lose perspective. But, come every Thursday and Sunday afternoon, my days off, whenever I stepped outside Andrée’s house and went into the city on my own, I was quickly reminded that not everyone shared her views.