Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  Bjelke-Petersen now imported to Brisbane 450 country police to help the existing force maintain law and order. The prime minister, said the premier, was allowing him to house the country police at the Enoggera army barracks and a migrant hostel at Wacol. William McMahon, characteristically, vacillated. After noting the derision that Bjelke-Petersen’s State of Emergency had attracted, and the anger within his own party, he tried to renege on his promise, claiming to have been misunderstood by Bjelke-Petersen. Yes, he’d OK’d the police’s use of the army barracks, but only as a last resort if the Queensland government could not find lodgings for them; and now that Bjelke-Petersen had use of the Exhibition Ground, he urged the premier to bivouac the officers there. The premier countered that the Exhibition Ground was inadequate. McMahon buckled again and green-lit the use of Enoggera Barracks and the Wacol migrant hostel. In surrendering, he wanted to make it clear that the decision to call the State of Emergency was the Queensland government’s alone and he had not been consulted.

  CHAPTER 18

  BACK TO REALITY

  The Springboks returned to Sydney. When, as in Orange, they found no protesters at the airport — and only eight and, literally, a black dog at the Squire Inn — they may have hoped that the protesters were at long last running out of steam. On the Thursday before the First Test against Australia, they sunbaked and dined on the deck of a cruiser that took them to the placid and picturesque reaches of the Hawkesbury River. That afternoon, back in the city, their training sessions at SCG No. 2 were conducted without interference.

  The side the tourists chose for the test contained no surprises. With Tommy Bedford and Gert Muller out injured, the selected 15 were McCallum, Hannes Viljoen, Jansen, Cronje, Nomis, Visagie, Joggie Viljoen, Ellis, du Plessis, Greyling, Williams, du Preez, Marais (C), van Wyk, and Sauerman. Facing them for the Wallabies would be Arthur McGill, John Taylor, John Cole, Stephen Knight, Geoff Shaw, Geoff Richardson, John Hipwell, Peter Sullivan, Bob McLean, Greg Davis (C), Stu Gregory, Reg Smith, Roy Prosser, Peter Johnson, and Jake Howard. Taylor, Sullivan, Smith, Richardson, and McLean would be making their test debuts. While this was a fair Wallaby team, pundits had seen enough of the rampaging Springboks not to dare predict an Australian victory. The hope was that the Wallabies would give a brave showing.

  At 6.00 a.m. on the morning of the test, Saturday 17 July, Denis Freney answered a loud banging on his front door. Two detectives were on the landing. They pushed inside and searched the premises. Freney was not surprised when one of the detectives produced three marine flares and claimed he’d found them under a wardrobe. ‘The bastard had planted them there,’ he later said. Meanwhile, a third detective was foraging in Freney’s car and found a parachute flare in the boot. This flare was indeed Freney’s. With barely time to pull on his long-johns, he was arrested and taken to a police station to be charged with possessing ‘grenades’. He spent the weekend of the test in Long Bay Jail. ‘It was a case of preventive detention to keep me away from the Sydney Cricket Ground,’ he said. Freney was granted bail on the Monday and released.

  Before the 2.30 kick-off at the SCG, the usual protagonists again telegraphed their intentions.

  The AAM would try to invade the field to have the game halted. (During the week, Peter McGregor and Meredith Burgmann printed and circulated a leaflet to demonstrators giving them their riding instructions for the test: ‘Arrive early. Same positions as last Saturday. Pack tight. Smoke bombs and other projectiles to be thrown in unison when play comes close to us. Watch for straight-looking types. They may be plain clothes cops. A good test is to offer them a whistle or a cigarette. Watch reaction.’)

  CARIS, with John Myrtle, Jim Boyce, James Roxburgh, Barry McDonald, and Paul Darveniza in the vanguard, would rally peacefully outside the ground.

  The Nazis were polishing their jackboots in anticipation of kicking commie heads.

  Police, acting commissioner Hanson was keen to have it known, would number 900 — 250 more than at the New South Wales versus Springboks game the previous Saturday. Twenty paddy wagons would ring the field to accommodate lawbreakers. Once more, the Police Rescue Squad would defuse flares and explosives thrown onto the field, and ten Sydney police stations would be clearing their cells to accommodate the expected influx of prisoners. It would be the biggest grouping of police ever assembled in a single area in New South Wales, and, warned Hanson grimly, ‘while we will be playing it cool, as usual … if the demonstrators want to play it rough, we will contain them’.

  And contain them they did. So subdued were the 6,000 protesters that only 36 arrests were made. One would-be field invader, a stocky fellow with a shaggy mop of sandy hair, was halted before he had two feet on the lush outer-ground grass. He was shoved into a paddy wagon, to be joined by flare throwers and around 20 protesters and overzealous rugby fans. A garbage bin was set alight, and other receptacles tipped over.

  David Vaughan was a ball boy at the test and experienced the drama from the sideline. ‘I was a rugby union referee, 31 years of age then, and the police said they didn’t think the sidelines would be safe for the youngsters on ball-boy duty, so the job was given to refs. I was instructed that if the ball was kicked near the fence, not to retrieve it, because I could be hit by a flying object. I should leave it to the police to get the ball. Even where I was officiating, I narrowly avoided being hit by a smoke flare. I’ll never forget the incredible noise of the chanting and whistles and horns being blown and the fireworks exploding. The other thing that stays with me is how very good those Springboks were. They toyed with the Wallabies. As a rugby man, I had sympathy for the South African players, who bore the brunt for their government’s policy. They didn’t create apartheid, yet they were being blamed for it. At St Joseph’s church, Edgecliff, on the Sunday before the test, the priest handed out a petition for those who opposed the tour to sign. I wrote to The Sydney Morning Herald saying that many in the congregation did not sign and I hoped that the following week the priest would give those who supported the tour [the chance] to put their names on a petition. That didn’t happen, of course. I didn’t believe trying to ban the South Africans would do any good. We should have communicated better with them, so they could see how other people lived and change their ways.’

  What serious action there was took place outside the SCG after the test as the protesters were leaving in a chanting, whistle-blowing bloc. Police attempted to disperse them by shoving them off Driver Avenue and into Moore Park. Those who resisted were roughed up. A few were thrown into the ornamental lake. One woman was knocked over and her glasses stamped upon. A photographer had his metal camera rammed into his face.

  The stymied field invader that day was Professor Fred Hollows, future Australian of the Year and saver of thousands of people’s sight, who earlier in his life had been a communist. Hollows, 42 in 1971, who was listed in Waverley Court proceedings as a doctor and the head of the Department of Opthalmology at the University of New South Wales, would face five charges: resisting arrest, offensive behaviour, possessing a hand grenade (once more, it was a smoke flare), possessing an article capable of discharging a substance that could cause bodily harm, and maliciously damaging a police tunic. The police prosecutor also informed Magistrate Byrne that Hollows had cut the strands of a barbed-wire fence with wire-cutters so he could run onto the field and other protesters could pour through the gap. Finally, he had ‘raised his voice in a continuously loud manner’. Hollows was remanded till 1 December on $200 bail, but his lawyer sought another date because his client would be in the Northern Territory treating Aboriginal children’s eyesight.

  If the expected riot did not eventuate, the Springbok victory surely did. A crowd of 31,982, which included Queensland police minister Hodges and police commissioner Whitrod doing a recce, saw the tourists win a thrilling match 19–11, scoring three tries, a penalty goal, and three goals to one try, two penalty goals, and one goal to Australia. The Wallabies’ sturdy defe
nce stifled the Springboks’ usually free-flowing attack and panicked their halfback Joggie Viljoen into throwing ill-directed passes that went to ground. Some observers remarked that the Springboks played as if stepping on eggshells, unwilling to defend and rush into rucks with their trademark ferocity for fear of sparking a brawl with their Australian opponents that, after the relentless demonstrations against them by the protesters, they feared would further tarnish their image. In the end, though, class told; class and bigger, stronger forwards, who overwhelmed the Wallaby pack. The fact that 14,000 fewer people attended the match than had watched the corresponding fixture in 1965 seemed to support the theory that the fear of being injured in a riot was keeping rugby union fans at home.

  There would be much hilarity among the CARIS faithful when John Myrtle circulated the front page of the South African Digest, dated 23 July, which put a ridiculous spin on the SCG protest. According to the Digest, the demonstration at the First Test fizzled not because of the overwhelming police presence or the rugby vigilantes but because ‘the demonstrators became enthralled with the brand of rugby played by the ’Boks’. When Springbok forward Frik du Preez ‘stretched his giant stride and blazed downfield with immense power, even the noisy “demos” stopped to gape’.

  Next day, Sunday, and one-up now in the best-of-three series, the South African players and management soothed their bruises and bumps on yet another cruise, on Sydney Harbour this time, followed by a barbecue. The outings were protester-free. On the sparkling waterway, the players’ minds would have been drawn to their impending visit to Canberra, where on Wednesday 21 July, they would face an ACT representative side. They had learned that demonstrations were anticipated in the politically charged national capital, and that 700 police, including 400 from New South Wales, had been detailed to the match and a two-metre barbed-wire fence had been erected around the ground (by police when AWU members refused). Bishop Crowther had been touting the Canberra visit as ‘the Springboks’ Waterloo’.

  Bulletin journalist Denis O’Brien summed up the first Sydney leg of the Springbok tour, noting that while Australians had become used to violence after witnessing Vietnam moratoriums and seeing Belfast bloodbaths and student riots in Tokyo and the United States on TV, the South Africans’ rugby tour by its halfway mark was making ‘a distinctive impact on the national psyche if only because the opposition to it was so determinedly sustained, so bitterly motivated, so uncharacteristically Australian … the anti-apartheid revolt is a new experience — chilling and awful in the clear possibility that someone is going to get killed.’ O’Brien cited the premeditated violence that erupted in the barrage of lethal missiles from the stands and terraces of the SCG. He noted that it was somehow fitting that the nation’s press was publishing daily scorecards chronicling the arrests: to that point, around 600 people had been detained in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, and with eight games still to be played it seemed certain that the figure would top 1,000. For many spectators, the football had become a farce. ‘It’s like paying to take part in chaos. In that respect, the anti-apartheid demonstrators are probably scoring significantly. Yet with the lines of police growing thicker around the perimeter of the grounds there is the inescapable feeling that there will be a cataclysm when an irresistible force meets an immovable object on an Australian sports field one afternoon at three o’clock.’

  Sun-Herald reporter Pat Burgess, who was staying at the Squire Inn to report on the action, swapped rooms with Hannes Marais after the Springbok captain was given a room directly above the protesters and was unable to sleep. One evening, Burgess wrote, three Special Branch policemen entered the room while he was there and sought permission to spy on the demonstrators from his window. ‘They settled down to work. “That one,” said the sergeant, “that’s the Bergman [sic] girl’s friend, next to the black bloke from Redfern, what’s his name, Gary Foley, but who’s that? There, that one between Wendy Bacon and the bloke with the hamburger. Tony,” said the sergeant, “nip down and see if you can get close. I want that man identified.” “I can help,” said my tiny informer’s voice … “That’s my parish priest.”’

  CHAPTER 19

  PUNISHMENT IN THE CAPITAL

  Geoff Wannan was in his first job out of university, a district engineer for New South Wales Government Railways based at Goulburn, 200 kilometres south-west of Sydney. His main responsibility was to supervise maintenance on the tracks between Goulbourn and Yass, and Goulburn and Cooma, the latter then a branch line passing through Canberra. One morning in July, he was summoned to his boss’s office and given an assignment. ‘The police had been in touch to say that the Springboks would be travelling by train from Sydney to Canberra via Goulburn, and an anonymous threat to blow up the train somewhere between Goulburn and Canberra had been received. Someone from the Railways was needed to travel on the Springboks’ train and point out to police officers the bridges and culverts where a bomb could be concealed. My boss told me that I was the man for the job.’

  When the footballers’ train pulled into Goulburn, Wannan and two burly policemen were waiting on the station platform. They climbed into the driver’s cabin and the train headed towards Canberra, 106 kilometres away. ‘I alerted the police when the first bridge was coming up,’ remembers Wannan, ‘and they ordered the driver to stop the train 150 metres this side of it. Then the police and I and some other officers who’d been sitting with the Springboks back in their carriage disembarked and gingerly approached the bridge. One policeman scrambled down an embankment and thoroughly checked under the bridge, before giving the all-clear. We crossed it at two kilometres per hour and continued on.’ After a search of the next few bridges and culverts on Wannan’s list revealed no bombs, the officers seemed to lose interest, sure now that the bomb threat was a hoax. ‘They soon began stopping the train just 30 metres from the bridge, taking a quick look over the side and saying, “All’s good.” By the time we were nearing our destination, they didn’t even stop the train. It was, “Aww, let’s not bother. Keep going.” Happily,’ says Wannan, who would rise through the ranks to become a general manager at the State Rail Authority, ‘the Springboks arrived in Canberra in one piece.’

  On the Sunday after the Sydney test, T.V. Cahill, the Catholic archbishop of Canberra, encouraged Canberrans in a pastoral letter to the churches of the archdiocese to extend ‘charity and hospitality in this moment of crisis’ to the South African visitors. ‘It is unjust for us to place on the shoulders of a group of footballers responsibility for injustice practised by the Government of the country from which they came, whatever may be that Government’s attitude in their regard. They have not come to arouse bitterness and discord and should be able to expect from Australians courtesy and charity.’

  Some Australians, observed the archbishop, opposed apartheid but still wanted to see the football games. They had a right to attend, and that right must be respected by those who boycott the matches. Similarly, those who considered it their duty to protest against aspects of South African legislation and practice should do so, providing they didn’t break the law, because violent demonstrations would offend citizens and visitors alike. Lawbreakers ‘were responsible before God for the consequences [of their actions], one of which is injury to persons and property’. It was the duty of every citizen to preserve law and order and to respect and cooperate with those — the police — entrusted with the task of enforcing them. ‘These are days when emotion tends to obscure principles.’ Violent protesters were using the very tactics that they deplored in South Africa. ‘In these difficult circumstances, the demands of courtesy, justice, truthfulness and brotherly love can easily be overlooked …’

  Among the Canberra anti-apartheid groups and their colleagues from Sydney who had caught trains or motored down the highway to join them, brotherly love, any kind of love, for the Springboks was in short supply. Around 200 threw rocks at the bus and abused the players when they travelled under police escort from Canber
ra railway station to the Canberra Rugby Union Club for a reception, to Parliament House (PM McMahon managed to duck them), and then on to their digs at the Commodore Hotel.

  Outside Manuka Oval on match day, CARIS members distributed literature and politely debated rugby fans while the people of the AAM barked at supporters to do the decent thing and go home. Sekai Holland was a full-force gale. ‘Give up one afternoon of rugby, that’s all,’ she beseeched to fans filing into the ground. ‘I know you Australians find emotion very disgusting, but I can’t help mine. Black Africans are desperate. Please stand up with us this afternoon. It is important for Australia to support black Africa. Give us a choice. We don’t want to have to call on the communists for support.’ Holland warned that soon there would be bloody war between black and white in South Africa, and said that she prayed that Australia would not send fighting men to support the whites.

  In the days before the match, the commissioner of the ACT Police, R.A. Wilson, predicted that the demonstrators, especially those from Sydney, would cause strife. But, fear not, he was on top of things. He had ordered 50 plainclothes police to grow their hair so they could infiltrate the campaigners and nip trouble in the bud.