“I was born in Canterbury Hospital in Sydney and when I was about six months old we moved back home to Lismore. My father was from here. Mum was from Sydney and when they met Dad always talked about paradise on Cabbage Tree Island so they moved back up home. I have an older brother Phillip and a younger brother Mark and a twin Lois. Mum cared for a number of the cousins who came to help with the kids, and Mum sent them off to secretarial college. We always had others living with us, just in that Aboriginal way. When we came back to Northern New South Wales Mum and Dad bought a place because they said, you know, we’ll never get built out, but by the time we were in high school, it was built out. Mum’s parents and family used to always come and visit every July which was really exciting. In the early days we were out at Cubawee which was an Aboriginal reserve, on the outskirts of Tuncester, but at the time, relations with the local town, there were some good ones, there were some bad ones, a bit like today, they just didn’t want to see us or hear us, and so the Council came and bulldozed down Cubawee. All those at Cubawee moved out to Gundarimba including my grandparents so we spent a lot of time visiting them.
In our last years of primary school Dad was the very first Indigenous person to be appointed with the Australian board of Missions. His job was literally going around the country, taking imagery, recording the situation of the disparity with overcrowded housing, poverty, all those sorts of things, so we moved to Sydney which was supposed to be for quite a while but Dad got homesick and we got homesick. We moved back home when I was about 13 and we went to Richmond River High to pick up where we left off.
My mother Muriel was an extraordinary human being. She was beautiful. She met my father at a time when it wasn’t considered the right thing, I think it was actually illegal. They had to get permission to marry from the Protection Board. She was an incredibly brave person to do that. When she came to Lismore, you hear these stories of the lovely, friendly country towns. Not for my mother, whose beauty and grace outnumbered and outclassed the majority of residents in town, but because she married a black man, there were assumptions I guess that she had to get married. All the way through our lives she told us to be ourselves, get educated and outclass them because they’re terrified. We don’t know why but they will fear you. My Mum and Dad’s story was a true love story and one that was considered unsavoury by the majority of Australians.
When Mum and Dad fell in love my Granny on my Aboriginal side and my Nanny on my Mum’s side, two women from totally different worlds, middle class Australian to poverty at Cubawee, they meet but they were mothers. They had the same nurturing and opportunities for their children. They both said…Are you sure? Because your children will neither fit there or there. My mother’s theory was, if you give a child love and the tools, they can become anything. My Dad had travelled and trained overseas. He always said that anything was achievable. Dad was a rep on for CATSI The federation Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and they were responsible for the ’67 referendum so they spent 10 years prior in the late 50s going around to communities everywhere to tell them of the opportunities. If Australians were to vote Yes for Aborigines, we would start to be counted as citizens on the National Census. Our childhood was our father at meetings all the time. We were surrounded by hearing Faith Bandler, Pastor Sir Doug Nichols, Margaret Tucker, Bert Groves, Joe McGuiness, Mac Miller, all these incredible leaders. Our childhood was filled with the optimism and the political endeavour to look for equity. It’s always been focussed on…don’t look at the deficit, look at what you can achieve.
We were very fortunate we came from such a strong family, where language was still spoken, even though it was outlawed, you just didn’t do it in front of white people. We also grew up with the cultural elements and stories of this region. So we had a very loving family but we were watching the devastation of our cousins. A lot of our cousins were taken in communities where there was so much trauma and a lot of self medication. We were told we could be better than that but everyone needs a crutch of some sort.
During high school, my optimism of a University education is what drove us. By the time we went to Fourth Form (Yr 10) we had a careers advisor. I wanted to go to Sixth Form (Yr12) because I wanted to be a Writer and I wanted to fulfil Dad’s dreams of going to Uni. That was his dream and he worked so hard to give us the things he couldn’t have. Mum was a great dressmaker but she wouldn’t let us at her machine very often. I wished I’d listened to those skills now. Anyway I had the dream of Uni, my sister wanted to be a hairdresser, my brother was right into Agriculture and Mark was still at school. So off we went to the Careers Advisor and we weren’t allowed to go in individually, we had to go in as the twins. I was so quiet, I hated conflict so I was this little quiet mouse. The Careers Advisor was a former June Dally Watkins poise educator and she just told it as it was. Why would the Government waste money sending us to 6th form when we’d only end up on the mission with kids, unemployed, etc? That was the dream she had for us. It was probably the best thing that ever happened. My sister was very gregarious, she broke all the rules. I was terrified of authority because we were told growing up that if we misbehaved the welfare board would come and take us away to one of the homes. I was terrified so I always tried to be nice. She just told the Careers woman to get f#*ked. We only had 3 weeks of term left so off we went.
I had this amazing teacher, John Muldoon who has since passed away. He told me I could be a Writer. He nurtured my dream and I will never forget him. Anyway, I had to get a job. My parents work ethic was that discipline of ethical, integrity and what people assume of you. We weren’t allowed to wear jeans. I remember when we got our first Levis Californians but up until then my mother would look at them and go home and make them. So clever! Everyday Dad would drop us off and we’d have to walk the CBD looking for jobs. This was before the internet of course. I remember it was the 16th time I went into Woolworths. You don’t put an Aboriginal on the cash register, they’ll just invite all their family to go through. There was a mistrust. I finally got a job in the deli section and my sister got a job at Simone’s Hair salon as a trainee.
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As we were grew up our parents were very strict about always giving back because we were lucky. We were better off than our cousins. We had a house and so there was an expectation we would volunteer. Dad was very big on volunteering. I volunteered as a Candy Striper all through high school, every weekend and after school. Lismore Base Hospital had a Candy Stripe program where you are literally helping Nurses, making beds, feeding patients, writing letters for them, reading books to them, the little things Nurses didn’t have time for. My sister volunteered at the nursing homes cutting the old ladies hair, my brothers mowed the lawns for the elderly.
My mother suggested I should apply for Nursing. Off I go to Lismore Base Hospital. My grades were excellent and a lot of girls got in so I was sure I’d get in because I had better grades than they did. My Mother came to the interview which I can’t believe now. There were silent policies across Lismore so Mrs Young the Matron suggested that rather being a Registered Nurse I would fit in better being a Nurse’s Aid. I said No! I was always told, Don’t settle for second best. At the end of the day I didn’t really want to be a Nurse, I wanted to be a Writer and a Journalist. I’ll never forget my Mum’s beautiful big blue eyes, she was always so kind, but she looked at this Matron and she told a lie. I had never heard my Mother lie in my life. Matron felt that it would be a waste of government money for me to do registered Nursing because of course I’m going to end up pregnant. There was no way I was getting pregnant. My Mum said, Well that’s a shame. I suppose we’ll have to send her to North Shore after all but we wanted to keep her home. North shore at the time had the highest level of Training. Anyway I applied for Canterbury Hospital and got straight in. I couldn’t believe all the girls who were accepted at Lismore with lower grades, Guess what? They got pregnant (laughs).
As I was leaving Woolworths, everyone was saying, you’ll be back, you won’t last, and it’s those comments that made me bloody do it. I moved down, it was a huge step. After 6 months I was so homesick and as you can imagine, there were people who didn’t want me to bathe their mother in-law, that brown skinned girl, we don’t want her. I’d ring Mum and Dad in tears and they’d say …Snap out of it! There was no talk of coming home. Luckily I would go to Nanny and Poppy’s who lived close by. My Poppy passed when I was in my first year of training. I was determined to finish and I did. When I graduated I only wanted to work in A&E because I would get close to people and get really upset when they died. In fact training there was one of the best things because we were getting shootings and stabbings and things like that. Other hospitals weren’t getting that experience and of course dealing with such a multi-cultural community as well. I think it really assisted me in looking beyond. I could have got caught up in the dialogue that was going on in those days but I remember this little old lady. She’d been in Palestine, they’d moved to Jordan then Lebanon. Her family had come over, couldn’t speak English of course, who could? I think of her and how strange the world must have been. She had chronic illnesses and I remember trying to communicate with her and the anxiousness in her eyes never left me. If I’m having a bad day I think of her. That year we got a Lebanese Doctor so I put it to our block, wouldn’t it be great if we learnt some basic words to communicate as there were a lot of patients from that demographic. They all went…they’re in Australia, they need to learn English. I was shocked, these are kind Nurses who care for people. Anyway I went to this Doctor and he taught me words and also showed me how to lay them out for Mecca when they passed. My mother prided herself in going to the supermarket and people would ask, How’s Rhoda going? Oh well, she’s a Registered Nurse. I remember when I first gave up nursing Mum said, well what and I going to tell the girls at Woolies?
Dad rings me one day, I’m studying and I’m working and he says, so what are you volunteering as? I said, but I’m working. He said well you have to give back so I went into Radio Redfern and volunteered to do radio. Tiga Bayles actually taught me how to do the panel. Prior to that I did Mission Beat Friday nights all around Redfern.