WARREN MUNDINE IN BLACK + WHITE - With a Foreword by Stan Grant - Pantera Press
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WARREN
MUNDINE
IN BLACK WHITE +
NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
With a Foreword by Stan Grant
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 3 31/5/18 3:32 pmFOREWORD BY STAN GRANT
W e’re blackfellas, me and Warren. We can look at each
other and with not a word spoken know everything
there is to know.
We are the country-music-raised, mince-eating, laughing,
fighting, football-playing blackfellas. We know burrs and
broken glass and hot tar roads and rivers and rust and dust.
We are the people of the frontier. We are descendants of
those who fought back. We are the children of the fringe.
From the outside we looked in. White people don’t know us
but we know them. We had to know them or we wouldn’t survive.
We learned this from birth.
Warren’s father is my father – no, not biologically but
spiritually – they are the same men. They smelled of sweat
from hard work, their skin black. They stood on solid ground.
They had a dignity that no one could lay low.
His mother was my mother. They were cooks and they told
stories. They picked things up and slapped us down. They
made us feel warm.
Our uncles, our cousins, our brothers and sisters, they are
us – me and Warren.
xi
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Follow this: Warren’s nephew Anthony’s mother’s sister is
married to my mother’s father’s brother (cousin). His grandson
is Blake Ferguson, a Rugby League player – me, Warren,
Anthony and Blake are different generations from different
places, yet connected as only we can be.
This is blackfella kinship. Totally natural to us. This is the
knowledge we carry. When someone asks, “Who is your mob?”
we know the answer.
Warren is Bundjalung-Gumbaynggirr. I am Wiradjuri-
Kamilaroi. They are old peoples, as old as human time on these
lands.
I can’t remember meeting him, cannot recall that exact day
or that exact conversation. It was at university in Sydney, that’s
where we met a long time ago. Where, but not when.
We have always known each other, really. In so many ways –
ways familiar to us Indigenous people – we have been the same
person. He was in the back of the car with me when my family
roamed from town to town looking for work.
He was in our caravans and shacks on the fringes of every
small town my family called home.
I was in his home uptown, his parents striking out from the
missions that had held us trapped, locked out of an Australia
built on our suffering.
We are blackfellas and all of us circle each other, our
footprints soft on the land and our songs carried on the
breeze.
This is Warren’s song. These pages tell his story. It is the
story of a life like all lives – happy and sad, triumph and failure,
hope and trust and disappointment. He has done some stupid
things but brave things too.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 12 31/5/18 3:32 pmForeword — xiii
Some of this must have been hard to write. As his friend, it
was hard to read. He has scars on his body and on his soul. He
is healing them, like all of us.
There is young Warren barely out of school and a father
married to a woman he did not really know. There is Warren
the worker, the tradesman, the struggling student poring over
books at night. He’s gone back to those books – big books by
big thinkers – time and again always asking himself the right
question: What do I really know?
Love has been important to Warren. He has loved well if
not always wisely. In love he has found meaning. He has lost
love and found it again.
There is a lot of politics; that’s been his business. Warren’s
made some strange bedfellows. He’s done deals and worked
both sides of the aisle.
Working in politics is asking to be lied to. He’s been
betrayed. He’s made some enemies. He cops more than his
share of abuse, especially from the faceless, nameless keyboard
warriors of the Twittersphere.
But who are they? We know who Warren is – here it is, in
these pages.
Warren’s a fighter. The Mundines are fighters. Like me, he
looked at Lionel Rose – our great champion – through the eyes
of a boy and learned the greatest lesson of our lives: stay on
your feet.
We can take a hit and keep coming.
Keep punching, my brother.
Stan Grant
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 13 31/5/18 3:32 pmWarren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 14 31/5/18 3:32 pm
I Don't Know My Place . . .
I t was world champion bantamweight boxer Lionel Rose who
first made me realise that I don’t know my place.
Lionel Rose was eight years older than me, an Aboriginal
kid from Jackson’s Track, a tiny Aboriginal settlement in
south-eastern Victoria. The community of Jackson’s Track
grew out of the bush when a few families moved to the area to
work on nearby farms, building makeshift homes and raising
their children. Lionel was born in 1948 and lived there with his
family in a one-roomed tin hut until he was ten.
In hindsight, I suppose I identified with Lionel Rose. My own
father’s family came from a similar Aboriginal settlement on the
Clarence River in northern New South Wales, called Baryulgil.
Settlements like Jackson’s Track and Baryulgil weren’t proper
towns with houses and streets, electricity and running water.
They were unofficial settlements where families built homes
from tin, wood and bark, with dirt floors, where people washed
in rivers and cooked on open fires and the menfolk often slept
1
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 1 31/5/18 3:32 pm2 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
outside under the stars. They grew out of a time when Aboriginal
people were squatters on their own lands, working and living
through the grace and favour of the white landowners.
And yet, somehow, from a shanty town like Jackson’s Track
emerged a world champion. I was an eleven-year-old when
Lionel, a hero to just about every Australian, and most especially
to Aboriginal Australians, boxed for the world bantamweight
title in Tokyo against Fighting Harada on 26 February 1968.
I was in my first year at the Marist Brothers Benedict Junior
College in Lidcombe.
The fight was broadcast in Australia live on the radio. My
family crowded around the radio in the living room listening
to the Australian announcer’s breathless excitement as Lionel
and Fighting Harada went head to head, toe to toe, for fifteen
blood-chilling rounds.
All the Mundines grew up with boxing. My uncles fought in
the tent fights at the local agricultural shows. My cousin, Tony
Mundine – who under our traditional kinship system is my
brother – became an Australian and international champion
in four weight divisions. His son, Anthony Mundine, has also
been a world champion and is a household name in Australia.
My mother disliked the brutality of boxing. She didn’t mind
us watching it but wouldn’t let her sons fight. The brutality was
on show when we attended Tony’s fight against former junior
middleweight world champion Denny Moyer. Tony gave Denny
a flogging and the crowd begged the referee to stop the fight.
At the conclusion of the fight, my brothers and I were leaving
the stadium when we noticed that our clothes were splattered
with blood … and we’d been sitting in the third row. At all of
Tony’s fights, Mum used to sit ringside, with her eyes closed,
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 2 31/5/18 3:32 pmI Don’t Know My Place … — 3
and whispering prayers. I asked once why she attended Tony’s
fights yet closed her eyes. To me, it was a waste of a ticket. She
replied that she had to make sure Tony was safe.
My brothers and I found our way into the ring when we
could, despite Mum’s objections. We loved watching tent
boxing at the country shows in Grafton and other country
towns we visited, and the Royal Easter Show in Sydney.
Later, in Sydney, I secretly went to the ring to get coaching
from Ray Perez, an American boxer who’d moved to Australia
and was teaching kids how to box at the Auburn–Lidcombe
RSL Youth Club. I told Mum I was going to the gym, which
was kind of true. When she found out, she marched down and
dragged me out of the ring, giving me a verbal lashing.
Everyone there was laughing as this small woman dragged a
near six-foot middleweight boxer – me – out of the ring. Mum
gave them all an earful as she dragged me out. Pointing to Ray
Perez, she said, “I’m not finished yet. I’ll get to you next.”
The laughing stopped. Mum turned to Perez and gave him
a dressing down. It was an amazing sight … she was a tiny
woman who looked like she could have been blown over by
a gust of wind; Perez was a solid, hard, nuggetty professional
boxer. But that didn’t stop her, standing there, surrounded by
all these big sweaty guys in boxing shorts, giving Perez and the
rest of them hell. And after he simply backed off in the face
of her onslaught, that was the end of my short-lived boxing
career. From then on it was strictly a spectator sport for me.
But Lionel’s fight – why was it so important, both to me and
to Australia? Because for the first time, an Aboriginal man was
representing a young nation, and fighting for our place to be
accepted in the world.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 3 31/5/18 3:32 pm4 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
Our place! Aboriginal people. That’s why I was so proud. In
my eyes, he was about to take us Aboriginals from being non-
people to being world champions.
To truly understand what Lionel’s match in Tokyo meant to
me and all Aboriginal people back in those days, you have to
appreciate the conditions, laws and restrictions that had been
imposed on us since British colonisation.
Rose’s world championship fight in 1968 occurred just under
a year after the historical 1967 referendum, when more than 90
per cent of Australians, with an overwhelming majority in all six
Australian states, voted to amend the Constitution to recognise
Aboriginal people as full citizens of the Commonwealth of
Australia instead of people predominantly governed by the
states. The referendum gave us an equal status to all other
Australians for the first time, at least in theory. In practice, there
was still a long way to go.
It would be another year, in 1969, before the NSW state
government would repeal the Aborigines Protection Act
1909 and begin to fully dismantle the system of control of
Aboriginal people that existed under the guise of providing us
with “protection and care”. And some years before the state’s
Aborigines Welfare Board would cease to be able to control
and intimidate Aboriginal families like mine.
The protection regime laid down under the Protection Act
and implemented by the Welfare Board controlled all aspects of
life for Aboriginal people in New South Wales. It regulated our
movement and enforced segregation.
This regime banned us from having a drink in a pub or from
gathering in groups in public. It banned non-Aboriginal people
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 4 31/5/18 3:32 pmI Don’t Know My Place … — 5
from having more than the fleeting company of Aboriginal
people.
One of my in-laws was a white man, a sailor, who’d fallen
in love with my relative, an Aboriginal woman. She lived on
the Mehi Mission in Moree. When he wanted to visit, her
family used to smuggle him onto the mission in the boot of a
car. He was forbidden by the Act from going onto the mission.
Aboriginal reserves and all property on them were under
the complete management and control of the Welfare Board.
It could remove youths from the reserves and place them into
service, and have full control of their wages to spend as it saw
fit, “in their interests”. The Welfare Board’s personnel could
enter Aboriginal homes without notice.
Years later, reading the original legislation, it surprised me
to find it was directed at Aboriginal people on reserves and
missions or receiving rations. Yet, when I was growing up, the
Welfare Board tried to exercise control over all of us, wherever
we lived. It was like living with shackles on our hands and feet.
My own family didn’t live on a mission or reserve. By
the time I was born my parents owned their own home in
South Grafton, a small town on the Clarence River. But we
were always aware of the rules that applied and wary of the
Welfare Board, which could show up at any time. My brothers
and sisters and I grew up feeling proud of our family being
Aboriginal home owners, yet, at the same time, the petty rules
and bureaucratic restrictions we were forced to live under made
us feel alienated and like outsiders.
As a child out and about with my brothers, someone from
out of town or who didn’t know our family might ask us what
we were doing “off the reserve”.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 5 31/5/18 3:32 pm6 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
My brother told me of a time someone from the Welfare
Board tried to walk into our home uninvited. According to the
story, Mum chased them away with a broom.
The Welfare Board could take Aboriginal children away
from their families, just like that. That happened to people we
knew, and Mum was always telling my siblings and me to be
careful when we were out and about, not to talk to adults we
didn’t know.
Government school principals could ban Aboriginal children
from attending and had to if white parents asked them to. For
most Aboriginal children, the only schooling options were
mission or reserve schools. Non-government schools, however,
had more autonomy in decisions on enrolling Aboriginal
students. We were Catholic and my parents sent us to Catholic
schools, educated side by side with students from all sorts of
backgrounds. Other Aboriginal parents got Certificates of
Exemption from the Aborigines Protection Act so they could get
around the prohibitions and send their children to government
schools.
Some of my older Baryulgil cousins got barely any schooling
at all, and a kind Russian immigrant, with limited English
himself, took it upon himself to teach them how to read.
Aboriginal people in New South Wales weren’t allowed out
after 5 pm and if they were caught, they could be arrested.
Once, when Dad was working away, near Coffs Harbour,
he was arrested on his way back from work at night. The
police didn’t believe him when he said he’d been in town for
work. They accused him of being a liar. But fortunately, in an
effort to prove Dad wrong, a police sergeant spoke to the job
supervisor, who confirmed Dad’s story. Dad was released, but
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 6 31/5/18 3:32 pmI Don’t Know My Place … — 7
only after spending a night or two in the police cells. After
that, Dad’s boss insisted he apply for what we all called a
“dog tag”, a Certificate of Exemption under the Aborigines
Protection Act.
When I was a child, Dad let me think he’d applied for the
dog tag so he could have a drink with his cricket mates after
their games. I only found out years later it was much more
serious than that.
Even though we didn’t live on a reserve and didn’t take
Aboriginal rations, we lived under the protection regime too.
After all, Dad wouldn’t have needed an exemption from it
unless it applied. In practice, the protection regime extended
well beyond what the legislation strictly called for and the
Welfare Board acted well outside its stated powers. No one
questioned this.
Families like ours, living in a town where we were known
and respected, experienced a hybrid life between the full
restrictions of the law and the freedoms everyone else had.
We knew we could get away with more freedoms than the
protection regime allowed but only if we stayed out of trouble,
always keeping one eye looking over our shoulders.
I lived under this regime for the first thirteen years of my
life, until the laws were repealed after the 1967 referendum.
But my parents lived under these restrictions for most of their
lives. Similar protection regimes existed in all the states and
territories. Most Aboriginal Australians you meet have either
lived under this regime or been raised by people who were.
And it does affect them.
From childhood, as Aboriginal people, we learned to be
submissive and deferential. In shops, we learned to stand back
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 7 31/5/18 3:32 pm8 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
and wait to be asked to approach the counter. We learned not
to go into certain places or we might be asked to leave or even
arrested. We learned not to speak to white people we didn’t
know or we might get into trouble. We learned to keep our heads
down and our mouths shut. Our safety could depend on it.
We learned to know our place.
* * *
L ionel Rose’s boxing match in Tokyo taught me that
knowing your place was just a state of mind. In the days
leading up to the fight, it seemed the whole nation was buzzing
with excitement. On the radio, the TV, the news at the movies
and in the papers, at school and on the street. Our friends and
family were buzzing as well. It was massive.
Ron Casey, host of TV Ringside, called the fight. Back in
those days, the radio announcers had to create the visuals with
their words. And Casey called every jab and every cross, second
by second. As I listened to the fight, blow for crushing blow, I
was barely breathing.
“Thirty seconds to go. Left-hand jab by Rose. Jab by Rose.
Lionel Rose, he looks tired in centre ring, hitting left and right
to the head. Harada the champion fighting desperately now.
Left and right by Harada. Right to the head. Left-hand jab by
Rose,” Casey screamed.
Why was it that this particular boxing match had such a
profound effect on me? It wasn’t just because boxing was part
of my family. Many other Australians were enthralled by this
Aboriginal boy competing for the world championship in a
match broadcast live from halfway across the world.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 8 31/5/18 3:32 pmI Don’t Know My Place … — 9
“Lionel, you’ve only got seconds to go. Left and right to the
body by Rose. Jab by Harada.”
Listening to Ron Casey calling the fight, I could barely
believe what was happening. I was excited, my heart was
pounding, I was breathless. I could barely sit still, and I had
a smile on my face as big as a Cheshire cat’s – and fear at the
same time. It felt like I only relaxed, sat still and breathed again
about a month after the end of the match.
“Here is Harada again, and Rose getting … jab by Rose, jab
by Rose again. A left to the body by Harada. A jab by Rose once
more.”
And it was over. The points were counted and the referee
signalled Lionel Rose as the winner. He’d won.
“Rose is champion of the world. Lionel Rose is champion of
the world,” Casey screamed again and again.
My family and I screamed and yelled and danced around
the room. An Aboriginal had become the undisputed world
champion. I felt like opening my bedroom window and
shouting out, “Lionel Rose is the undisputed champion of the
world.” My family and I were on top of the world for days, for
months, for years.
And, as if a brilliant light had suddenly switched on inside
my brain, it dawned on me. Rose was in Tokyo … in Japan.
An Aboriginal boy from a shanty town called Jackson’s Track,
on the other side of the world being glorified, talked about on
radio. He had won the world championship.
If he could do it, then why not me?
Lionel Rose didn’t know his place.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 9 31/5/18 3:32 pmWarren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 10 31/5/18 3:32 pm
PA RT 1
NGALINGAH DJAGUN*
OUR COUNTRY
* ngalingah djagun: our country. Western Bundjalung (Wahlubal dialect)
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 11 31/5/18 3:32 pmWarren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 12 31/5/18 3:32 pm
The Three Brothers
L ong ago, there were three brothers – Birrung, Mamoon
and Yar Birrain. They travelled in a great canoe from far
across the sea with their wives, their children and their mother,
landing at the mouth of the Clarence River.
That first night, after they set up camp, a fierce storm arose
from the west and the great canoe was broken into pieces and
washed out to sea.
“Our only hope is to build new canoes and return from here,
going from island to island,” they said. So the three brothers
found a large blackbutt tree on the banks of the river. They
stripped the bark and built three new canoes.
Now, while they were building the canoes, their mother
went out in search of yams to eat. By the time they had finished
building the new canoes, she still had not returned. They called
for her and looked for her everywhere – along the beach, up the
river and among the tea-trees. But they could see no sign of her.
“She must have died,” one brother said. “We have to get back
to sea,” said another.
13
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So they each packed up their canoes and set out to sea with
their families. After they were some distance away, their mother
returned and realised she’d been left behind. She climbed to the
top of the hill and sang out to them. She saw they were far out
to sea. She waved and sang out but they could not hear her. She
became angry, cursing them for leaving her behind, singing for
the ocean to become rough. The water rose and waves crashed
on the shore and, further north, the three canoes were forced
back to land.
After they returned to shore, one brother travelled south
to search for their mother. He found her at the mouth of the
Clarence River, where she had been living on yams. That is
how Yamba was named.
The three brothers travelled north. They settled at Brunswick
Heads, where the eldest brother showed all the families how to
make fire and taught them their laws and about marriage and
food. After a time, their families grew and they decided to go
their separate ways to populate their new land. One brother
and his family went north, staying close to the coast. One
brother and his family went south and the third brother and his
family went west.
These families began the three branches of the Bundjalung
Nation.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 14 31/5/18 3:32 pmWho's Your Mob?
I was born in Runnymede Hospital in Grafton, New South
Wales, in 1956, in a separate wing for Aboriginal mothers
and babies.
At school we learned that Grafton was founded in 1851
and named after the Duke of Grafton, the grandfather of Sir
Charles FitzRoy, who was the state governor from 1846 to
1855. Grafton became a major commercial centre and the
economic heart of the Clarence Valley, with big local industries
in timber and beef cattle. White settlers were attracted to the
area for the richness of its earth and to harvest the vast forests
of red cedar.
But Grafton’s history as a settlement goes back thousands of
years before that, sitting on the mighty Clarence River at the
southernmost point of the Bundjalung Nation and bordering
the Gumbaynggirr Nation, my father and mother’s peoples,
respectively.
The story of the Three Brothers is the Bundjalung creation
legend. I must have been told this story a million times as a boy
15
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by my parents, aunts, uncles, everyone. My grandparents told it
to them. And I told it to my own children.
For thousands of years, this story has been passed down
from one generation to the next. It’s our legend of how the
Bundjalung Nation – the world – began.
The story varies a bit depending on who’s telling it:
everyone likes to say that the three brothers landed on their
part of the coast. In the Clarence River area, the story has the
brothers landing in Yamba. Others say the brothers landed
further north, at Evans Head, also said to be home to the
goanna spirit, who brought rain and protected people from
the serpent.
The Bundjalung Nation extends from the north-eastern
corner of New South Wales, at Grafton, to the south-eastern
corner of Queensland, at Warwick and the Gold Coast. It
covers the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and
at its south is the great Clarence River, which winds from
the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It extends inland to the
western foothills of the Great Dividing Range.
As in the legend, there are three branches of the Bundjalung
people. My family’s is the Western Bundjalung.
People often talk about Aboriginal Australians as if we’re
one race of people. This idea of classifying humans into
biologically distinct races – based on skin colour, eye and hair
colour, the shape of your head, the size of your nose – is a
legacy of previous centuries. It emerged at a time when humans
who shared common physical characteristics generally lived in
stable, geographically isolated breeding pools. But race biology
quickly becomes meaningless in a world of global migration
and cross-cultural marriages.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 16 31/5/18 3:32 pmWho’s Your Mob? — 17
For eighteenth-century Europeans, categorising the people
they found on the Australian continent as one race made sense.
But it wasn’t how those people saw themselves.
The Oxford Dictionary defines a “nation” as “a large body of
people united by common descent, history, culture, or language,
inhabiting a particular state or territory”. To me, that’s a better
way to describe Australia’s first peoples. The people living on
the Australian continent before 1788 may have all looked alike
to the British but they certainly didn’t regard themselves as one
people. They lived in hundreds of distinct social groupings, each
one united by common descent, history, culture, languages and
stories, each with their own kinship systems, laws and systems
of governance, culture and arts, and each occupying distinct
land and waters, knowing which land and waters belonged to
them and which belonged to other groups.
These were Australia’s first nations. The Bundjalung and
Gumbaynggirr Nations were two of them.
Eighteenth-century Europeans aren’t the only ones who
contributed to this “Aboriginal race” idea. There was a time
when many Aboriginal leaders chose to frame Aboriginal
people as one group in campaigning for rights. This “pan-
Aboriginal” movement became particularly strong during the
1960s and 1970s, and fostered the idea that Aboriginal people
are one nation or one race of people.
Why? It suited the politics of the time. It mirrored the Black
Panther movement in the United States and set Aboriginal
people within the broader context of a global, black civil rights
movement – a black consciousness. Unity was strength, and as
a united group we achieved a great deal, certainly more than
could have been achieved as a few hundred separate groups.
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The Mabo decision of the High Court, which recognised
native title, refocused land rights back to the original nations
because native title rights stem from descent, like inheritance.
The special relationship Aboriginal people have with
their country is often described in such wishy-washy terms
that it misses the point. It’s true our unique kinship systems
incorporate land, sea and living things, such that these form
a part of both the religious and civic framework. But, even
putting this to one side, Aboriginal peoples’ relationship with
their country is grounded in the fundamental connection
humans have with the physical land they call their own, the
same connection that exists for most people in the world in
relation to their own nations, the same connection most
Australians have with Australia.
I might describe myself as “Aboriginal” or as “black”
because these are descriptions other people understand. But I
don’t consider myself part of an “Aboriginal race” or a “black
race”. I’m from the Bundjalung Nation, like my father. My
mother was from the Gumbaynggirr Nation and also of Yuin
descent, and that gives me status in those nations too. Just like
nationality, being Bundjalung or Gumbaynggirr or Yuin comes
from descent. It’s a birthright.
Overwhelmingly, when Aboriginal people think of their
indigeneity, they think in terms of the nations they’re born into
or descended from. We call them our “mobs”. And one of the
first things we ask each other when we meet for the first time
is: “Who’s your mob?”
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 18 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna?
T he Northern Rivers region of New South Wales is a
stunning, scenic part of Australia. Volcanic activity
millions of years ago left mountains and valleys with rich
fertile soil, lush green forests, the last rainforests in the state,
and some of Australia’s mightiest waterways. White settlers
flocked to it from the early years of colonisation.
Two of those were Edward and Frederick Ogilvie, English
brothers who, as young children in 1825, migrated with their
parents to the New South Wales colony, where the family
settled on a grant of land in the Hunter region. In 1840 the
brothers, by then in their mid-twenties, travelled north from
the Hunter Valley, with the help of an Aboriginal tracker,
looking for new grazing land for sheep. They reached the upper
reaches of the Clarence Valley and secured an 81,000-hectare
property fronting over eighty kilometres of the Clarence River,
naming it Yulgilbar, a word they derived from listening to the
local spoken language, possibly believing it to mean “place of
little fishes” or “place of the platypuses”. They went back to
19
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the Hunter and returned to Yulgilbar with livestock, men and
supplies to establish their new station.
Today, the Northern Rivers region is one of the most highly
populated rural areas in Australia. Back in the early 1800s, it
was also one of the most highly populated areas of Australia.
Populated with Bundjalung people, that is.
This inevitably led to bloody conflicts over land as colonists
encroached into the area. Not long after the Ogilvies arrived at
the upper Clarence, there was a massacre of Bundjalung people
on Yulgilbar Station carried out by local colonists primarily in
retaliation for the killing of a station owner further up river in
Tabulam. Reputedly, the Ogilvie brothers took a leading role
in the attack. This was typical of the exchanges in the early
frontier conflicts across the continent – one white colonist
killed, many Aboriginal people killed in retaliation.
The station owner had attacked a group of Bundjalung for
taking blankets and they killed him defending themselves.
The retaliation escalated when the colonists heard a station
worker had also been killed and assumed the same group was
responsible, although that killing was later found to have been
committed by a white worker.
It was after this conflict that the Ogilvie brothers found a
Bundjalung boy, Pundoon, hiding after his family members
had all either been killed or fled. Pundoon remained with
the brothers for some time, travelling back with them to the
Hunter. During this time, Edward Ogilvie started to learn
the local Western Bundjalung language from Pundoon. The
story provides a glimpse into how violent and traumatic
these conflicts with the colonists were for the local Western
Bundjalung people. These weren’t clashes between colonists
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 20 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna? — 21
and Bundjalung men, but between colonist men and Bundjalung
families. Men, women and young children.
In 1842, Edward Ogilvie wrote a letter of more than 2000
words to the Sydney Herald detailing his early encounters
with the local Aboriginal people of the Clarence River region,
the early conflicts and his negotiations with them. Obviously,
it reflects his perspective and no doubt paints him in a better
light than the reality may have been. But it provides a unique
window into the relations between the Ogilvies and my
forebears.
It’s obvious from Ogilvie’s account that the local Bundjalung
families wanted to keep away from Ogilvie and his party. And
they were absolutely terrified. At one point, he describes a
Bundjalung woman with her child, who falls cowering to the
ground as he rides up to her. The people he describes don’t
sound like people prone to unprovoked “murders” of colonists,
and indeed they weren’t. Bundjalung people on foot with
boomerangs and spears were no match for men with guns and
horses. And Ogilvie seemingly had no fear heading into the
mountains to find them.
The letter also describes Ogilvie’s negotiation with the
local Bundjalung people over use of the land. The local
Bundjalung originally told him to go away but were calmed
by Ogilvie knowing some of their language and were
persuaded to make a truce of sorts. His account shows his
pragmatism and a desire to avoid conflict. It also shows the
pragmatism of my forebears. Here was a group of people
playing the cards they were dealt and trying to manage the
problems that had come their way. It’s a trait I see in my own
extended family today.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 21 31/5/18 3:32 pm22 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
It was during this encounter that Ogilvie met Toolbillibam
(later known as “King Billy”) who, as leader of that group,
brokered the truce with the Ogilvies.
The most interesting feature of Ogilvie’s letter is his plea to
fellow colonists to think differently about Aboriginal people; to
think of Aboriginal people as human beings. His closing words:
The only apology I can offer for occupying so large a
portion of your valuable space, is, that without entering
into the details I could not have attained the object I had
in view, namely, to show the very placable disposition and
unrevengeful spirit of these people, and to convince those
who are in the habit of looking upon them as little better
than wild beasts, that they are mistaken.1
Frederick Ogilvie died a few years later and Edward Ogilvie
carried on running the station alone. In time, he needed more
labour and the Western Bundjalung families provided ample
supply, several moving from the surrounding forest and
mountains and settling at Yulgilbar Station. He employed them
as roustabouts, cattlemen, farm hands and domestic servants.
To avoid land disputes, he always set aside a small part of the
station land for the Aboriginal families to live on autonomously.
Ogilvie even went through ceremony with Toolbillibam’s group
and was initiated under Bundjalung law.
My ancestors were among these families. Our surname,
Mundine, came from the name Mundy or Mundi, the name
of one of my ancestors. Some people say it comes from a word
meaning “swamp”. Others say it was taken from the name of a
farm. All we really know is we’re the only people in Australia
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 22 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna? — 23
to have the name Mundine. Anyone with that surname in
Australia is our family by blood or marriage.
Ogilvie later returned to England for a few years and
arrived back at Yulgilbar with a wife. As one story goes, he
only convinced her to marry him and move to the end of the
earth by promising to build her a castle. And he did. Yulgilbar
homestead is indeed built in the style of a castle. Quite famous
in the area, it is known as Yulgilbar Castle but the Yulgilbar
families have always referred to it as the Big House.
One of Edward Ogilvie’s granddaughters was Jessie Street.
Her mother inherited Yulgilbar Station in 1896 and the young
Jessie moved there to live. Around the time my father was born,
she married Sir Kenneth Street, a Sydney barrister who became
Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Jessie Street became a well-known political activist in
Sydney, with views on social justice and human rights that were
then regarded as radical, even extreme. She was a suffragette
and also active in the campaign for the 1967 referendum. I
believe her early experiences at Yulgilbar shaped her views on
Aboriginal people.
Yulgilbar remained in the Ogilvie family for seventy years
but was sold to a syndicate in 1926. The Castle itself fell into
disrepair. In 1949, the property was purchased by Sam Hordern
Sr of the Sydney retailing dynasty. His daughter, Sarah, married
Baillieu Myer, son of Sidney Myer, who founded the Myer
retailing empire. Baillieu and Sarah Myer restored the Castle
and still have Yulgilbar Station today.
* * *
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 23 31/5/18 3:32 pm24 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
T he Yulgilbar Aboriginal families were frequently relocated
around the station. Some of my family recalled that in the
early 1900s they were moved from close to the Castle to another
part of the property further away from the river. For people
who lived off the land and washed in the rivers and streams,
this was more than an inconvenience. But they weren’t in a
position to argue. When Sam Hordern took the property, he set
aside a permanent camp, fenced and gated, which was near the
school and the shop. It became known as Baryulgil, a reversal
of the name Yulgilbar, or as Baryulgil Square or the Square.
It was settled by four family groups, one being the Mundines
and another being the Donnelly family (my grandmother Lily’s
family).
My father, Roy Mundine, and his eleven brothers and sisters
were all born at Baryulgil. Dad was born some time between
1916 and 1919. He never knew for sure as his birth wasn’t
registered. By the mid 1900s, Dad’s father, Harry Mundine,
became the leader of the Baryulgil community.
One of Harry’s grandfathers was known as “King Derry”.
He was an important man within the Githabul clan and
was referred to as “king of the Casino blacks” by the white
pastoralists in the area. In many parts of New South Wales
in the 1800s and early 1900s, the pastoralists used to identify
Aboriginal elders as kings or queens and present them with
king or queen plates engraved with their name or sometimes
the name of the station. Many of the plates are retained by
local historical societies or museums. The plate of King Billy
(Toolbillibam) is still held at Yulgilbar Station. Elders would
be presented with their plate (and a crown) at a coronation
ceremony. This helped relations between the groups. In a way,
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 24 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna? — 25
it was an acknowledgement by the white pastoralists of the
authority structure in the Bundjalung clans and family groups,
and who spoke for the land on their behalf.
The practice of king and queen plates eventually died out but
my grandfather Harry didn’t need one to staunchly maintain
Baryulgil as autonomous land. The gate to Baryulgil was
always locked and he controlled the key. Living autonomously
meant just that. The Baryulgil families didn’t get any rations or
supplies from the government or the missions. They took care
of everything themselves – finding their own food and water,
and building their own shelters. They would hunt, fish and
collect their own food from the rivers and the bush and cook it
on an open fire. They washed in the river and the waterholes.
Everyone had to hunt and gather food from a very young
age. The kids didn’t sit around waiting for mum to serve up.
They were responsible for getting the food too.
The rivers of the Western Bundjalung area are teeming with
river turtles, and turtle diving was a big part of life for Western
Bundjalung people. Dad and his brothers, sisters and cousins
learned to turtle dive from when they were very young, diving
up and down the river. They’d also fish for catfish, perch and
cod. They gathered fruit and vegetables from the bush. They
dug wild potatoes, called gurumba, out of the ground, which
they ate with lillypillies. Also wild berries and geebung, a bush
fruit that looked like a very small mango and grew on trees.
Wild honey was cut out of the trees with sharpened stones or
little “tommyhawks”. And if any bees were left in the honey
they could eat those too.
Kangaroos, echidnas, goannas, carpet snakes and witchetty
grubs were other sources of food the children and adults would
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 25 31/5/18 3:32 pm26 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
hunt or forage for. They might also get some beef or chicken
offcuts from the station to make sausages. As a child visiting
Baryulgil, I ate all this food too. It makes for great dinner-
party conversation.
“How do you eat echidna?”
“Bash it on the head. Cook it in the fire until all the spikes
fall off.”
“What does it taste like?”
“A bit like porcupine.”
The Baryulgil children were taught from a young age
how to hunt. They’d use a fishing line or spears made from
sharpened sticks to catch fish. They made clubs called boondis
out of wood or used their little tommyhawks to kill animals.
When they got a little older, they could hunt with guns, like
the adults. Guns were particularly good for hunting turkeys,
pigeons and other birds.
Dad told me about a time when he was young and out in
the bush with some of his brothers hunting. They were playing
around when one brother put his finger out on a log and dared
another brother.
“Bet you can’t get my finger with the axe!” he said.
Bang. The older brother slammed down the axe fast.
“Aargh!” the first brother screamed with a blood-curdling
cry.
“Got you!” said the older brother.
He didn’t pull his finger out in time and his older brother
chopped it off.
They were also taught when to hunt, which seasons were
good for which animals and which seasons to avoid. This is
how my Dad’s sister, Aunty Gunda, spoke about it:
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 26 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna? — 27
We knew the different seasons by the flowers on the trees.
We would know that it was the season for certain animals
when the wattle tree and what we used to call “apple
trees” were in flower. Once you see the wattle trees in
flower that is the time that the turtles are fat.
Our elders would tell us not to go hunting for turtle until
after the first big storm, because after the first big storm they
would come out and lay all their eggs along the river bank.
The big storm usually comes in September.
If the porcupine were in breeding season they’d tell
us not to kill them. At certain times of the year, they’d
tell us not to hunt for kangaroos because they’d say
they’d be full of worms from eating the grass. The old
people told us to only hunt for goanna and carpet snake
at certain times of the year. They’d tell us that when the
wind blows in August, the westerly wind, that’s when the
snakes wake up and the goannas come out. They’d say
that they were coming out and laying their eggs outside
the nest where they slept all winter. And then the second
time the wind blows, the westerly wind, they’d start
crawling around then and that’s when we would go and
hunt for them. When the carpet snake and goanna come
out from winter, they’re clean. After they’ve been out for
a while they’d eat rubbish. You could tell the difference
by the colour of their skins. They’d be clean and fat.
That was the only time that we were allowed to hunt for
them. 2
Electricity didn’t come to Baryulgil until the 1980s. The
families used candles or kerosene lamps. They didn’t have
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 27 31/5/18 3:32 pm28 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
running water either and they would walk to the river to wash
and to collect water and bring it back in buckets. On wash
days, the women and children would sit by the creek and wash
all day. Then when the men came back from work, they’d help
carry all the clothes back.
They relied on bush medicine – knowing what plants and
other foods would help with sickness or heal wounds. Sap from
the black boy tree was good for healing sores and was used as a
soap. They also boiled it in water to make a varnish for painting.
When someone had the flu, they would kill a possum, boil
it up in water and drink the water. A farmer once told me that
possums taste terrible because they eat a lot of eucalyptus. He
said the best way to eat possum is to boil it up with rocks, toss
out the possum and eat the rocks. Seems like my family thought
the same – unless people were sick. Then, all the eucalyptus oil
was good for you.
The Baryulgil families made small shacks out of whatever
they could collect from the bush or were allowed to bring
back from Yulgilbar. At night, the women and girls slept in
the shacks and the men and boys slept on the ground outside.
My dad slept on the ground under the stars until he moved to
South Grafton in his early twenties.
As a boy, Dad woke up to the songs of the older men up
on the hill, as they sung-in the morning in Bundjalung. Like
the story of the Three Brothers, the songlines were passed
down from generation to generation. The songlines weren’t
just ceremonial. The words contained information that people
needed to know, information that wasn’t written down, like
directions on how to travel through country and follow trading
routes, stories and history and the law.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 28 31/5/18 3:32 pmHow Do You Eat Echidna? — 29
The Bundjalung people didn’t have didgeridoos (yidaki).
These were instruments from the Aboriginal groups in northern
Australia, where the tree branches are good for making them.
My Aunty Gunda told me there were no smoking ceremonies
either; she’s only seen them in modern times. The Bundjalung
used clapsticks. We obviously weren’t very musical, we just
banged two sticks together. And if anyone heard me sing, they
would agree.
The Bundjalung were a warrior people. There were stories
of battles with neighbouring nations. The Bundjalung made
boomerangs, including the barung – the killer boomerang.
They made shields from bark and traded them with other
nations (presumably not the ones they were warring with).
There are still cut-outs from trees used to make the shields.
Goes to show that it doesn’t matter where you go in the world,
humans follow similar patterns.
Dad grew up speaking Bundjalung and English. He attended
the local Baryulgil public primary school for a while. Dad never
went to high school and he began working with the rest of the
Baryulgil families at a young age. But he learned to write, with
a most beautiful script, and as an adult was an avid reader.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 29 31/5/18 3:32 pmFrom Masters To Slaves
W hen the British came to the Western Bundjalung region,
my ancestors went from being masters to slaves. Before
then, they lived under their Bundjalung law, the law their
creation legend told was handed down from the eldest of the
Three Brothers to all the Bundjalung people. They protected
their sacred areas and their customs and taboos. Bundjalung
law was centred around the kinship system and everything in
their universe was part of that system.
Then the Bundjalung people became squatters on their own
land. The British had no awareness, let alone respect, of what
was sacred or taboo. Bundjalung people would be killed if
they resisted. Their family structures, laws and customs were
completely upended.
Many Bundjalung worked for the colonists on their stations
and in their timber mills. Pastoralists across the continent relied
on Aboriginal labour to build and operate Australia’s pastoral
industry. In 1937, Queensland’s Chief Protector of Aboriginals,
John Bleakley, tabled a memo before the Initial Conference of
30
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 30 31/5/18 3:32 pmFrom Masters To Slaves — 31
Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities. It argued
against the mass transfer of Aboriginal people to institutions,
where they could be cared for, controlled and educated, because
of the adverse impact on labour availability. It said:
… what is perhaps the most important asset of this vast
Commonwealth, the pastoral industry, would be in a
sorry plight if deprived of its native labour in outback
places where white labour is not only difficult to obtain,
but often inferior in quality. In fact it is known that many
pastoralists claim that their stations could not have been
developed without aboriginal labour.
Those Aboriginal people who built Australia’s first pastoral
industry were not paid proper wages – at best a pittance, or
maybe in tea and damper or in return for living on land that
was theirs to begin with. Today we call this modern slavery.
This was the story all over Australia. But the Mundines
and the other upper Clarence Bundjalung families were very
independent-minded. People today talk about Aboriginal
self-determination. Self-determination is making your own
decisions, taking care of yourself and taking responsibility for
your own path in life. One thing my family modelled for me
was that you don’t wait for government or anyone else to give
you self-determination. You take it.
My grandfather Harry Mundine’s cousin (in the Bundjalung
way, his brother) was Jimmy Mundine, a police tracker and
sergeant in the Lismore District. A rodeo rider and keen
sportsman from Pretty Gully, near Tabulam, he joined the
police as a tracker in 1941. When he died, in 1958, he received
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 31 31/5/18 3:32 pm32 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
a full police funeral with a police motorcade escort and forty-
five police officers from around the Lismore District forming
a guard of honour for him at Tabulam. A Welfare Board
representative said of him:
Sergeant Mundine was a man who was always able to look
after himself and never came to the Board for assistance. 3
Another thing made a big difference for the Mundines and
the other Baryulgil families. Courtesy of the Yulgilbar Station
owners, they had one tiny piece of land they could call their
own.
Baryulgil wasn’t a mission or reserve. There were no
government-appointed managers or religious groups controlling
the community day to day. This gave the Baryulgil families some
leeway to dodge the control of the Welfare Board. But, like my
mother years later in South Grafton, this required having your
wits about you and sometimes the support of white people.
My aunts told me about a time a policeman came with some
Welfare Board representatives wanting to inspect the camp at
Baryulgil. They arrived, unannounced, and stood at the locked
gate just expecting to be let in. When the families at Baryulgil
saw the policeman, the children knew straight away to run off
into the bush and down to the river to hide. That’s what they
did whenever they thought the Welfare Board was around to
avoid being caught and potentially removed.
The policeman and the Welfare Board representatives he
was escorting must have got the shock of their lives when my
grandfather Harry stepped out from behind a large gum tree
brandishing his gun.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 32 31/5/18 3:32 pmFrom Masters To Slaves — 33
“This is my land. Get out of here and don’t come back,” he
shouted.
The policeman and the Welfare Board workers turned on
their heels, but they weren’t going to let some Aboriginal man
push them around. They promptly went up to Yulgilbar Station
to complain. They expected the station owner and manager
would naturally crack down on any troublesome blacks on
their land. Not so. They stood up for my grandfather Harry.
They said he was a good worker and assured them the Baryulgil
families were no trouble. They made it clear they didn’t want
the authorities doing anything that might drive away their
workers or create trouble for the station. They were to leave my
grandfather Harry and the blacks on his camp alone.
Even after all the inquiries, research and firsthand accounts,
there are still politicians, commentators and others who hold
onto the idea that Aboriginal children were only removed from
families if there was neglect and if the authorities genuinely
believed the children could have a better future either living in
an institution or with a white family. I’ve read the information
and I’ve lived under a protection regime, and I don’t agree. But
it’s very hard to convince some people otherwise.
One reason for this is that most people today simply don’t
think of Aboriginal people the way the authorities thought of
us when these protection regimes were in operation. And the
mindset today of what it means for a child to have a “better
future” is very different from the mindset that drove these
protection regimes, one that’s almost incomprehensible to most
people now.
If you want to understand this better, read the transcript
of proceedings of the 1937 Aboriginal Authorities conference.4
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 33 31/5/18 3:32 pm34 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
Make yourself a cup of tea, sit down somewhere quiet, empty
your mind of everything you think you know about the removal
of Aboriginal children from their families and just read it.
Without judgement or preconception – just take it in. When
you finish, you’ll feel you’ve taken a journey through a very
foreign world indeed and you’ll almost certainly need another
cup of tea. This was the world of the Aboriginal protector.
The first thing that struck me when I read the conference
transcript was that these protectors were utterly caught up
in eugenics and race biology. To them, a person’s capability
and potential – in education, work, personal behaviour,
personal hygiene, even in their life aspirations – depended on
how much Aboriginal “blood” they had. To the protectors of
1937, race – the colour of your skin, eyes and hair, the shape
of your head, the size of your nose – determined your future.
In their world view, “full-bloods” had no potential other
than to live in a primitive, uncivilised, nomadic existence
subsisting in the bush, kept separate on set-aside land for
whatever years of survival they had left or until someone
else wanted the land for something else. But those of “mixed
blood” had hope to be assimilated into white society, with
greater opportunity the paler they were, and eventually all
the Aboriginal blood would dilute to virtually nothing. And
so the Conference resolved:
That this Conference believes that the destiny of the
natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood,
lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the
Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all
efforts be directed to that end.
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 34 31/5/18 3:32 pmFrom Masters To Slaves — 35
These Aboriginal protectors didn’t speak of Aboriginal people
as real human beings. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a
conference on animal husbandry of some species of livestock.
Genuine concerns are expressed for the welfare of Aboriginal
people, at times even compassion, but it’s the kind people might
have for dogs at the pound or animals in a zoo.
You also get a sense of the absolute control these protection
regimes had over Aboriginal people. The extent and exercise
of control varied somewhat between states and territories, but
it’s clear the protectors routinely controlled where Aboriginal
people worked and lived, their schooling and whether they could
raise their own children. Western Australia’s Commissioner of
Native Affairs, A.O. Neville, even boasted that all Aboriginals
up to age twenty-one were his wards and he was entitled to
treat them in loco parentis.
The protectors believed Aboriginal children were living in an
inherently undesirable situation by reason of the circumstances
of their lives. Their attitude to child removal was based on
creating a window of opportunity for Aboriginal children to
leave their Aboriginal families and communities and move into
mainstream society. Whether Aboriginal parents were actually
taking good care of their children was beside the point.
Aboriginality of itself meant living in a state of deprivation,
by definition, so Aboriginal people would always have a better
life if given a pathway into white society – such as by being
adopted by white families, being institutionalised very young
and/or being put into work as adolescents and kept away from
their community as much as possible.
In the late 1930s, Mum and Dad were in their late teens.
They were starting to think about getting married, having
Warren Mundine_Finals_New Edition.indd 35 31/5/18 3:32 pm36 — NYUNGGAI WARREN MUNDINE AO
children and living their life together. Those senior bureaucrats
who gathered in Canberra in 1937 to discuss the “problem”
of Aboriginal people, like some kind of troublesome livestock,
were talking about my parents, my aunts and uncles, my
grandparents and all the other Aboriginal people I grew up
with.
Once I was talking to a woman who believed the Stolen
Generations are a myth. I’d been talking to her about the
history of the Mundines and the land at Baryulgil and she was
fascinated. So I told her about the time my grandfather Harry
chased away the Welfare Board with a gun. She looked at me
puzzled.
“But why would they take away the children from your
families? They weren’t being neglected. You said the parents
were hard workers and the children were well cared for,” she
said.
“Define neglect,” I replied. “They lived in tin and bark
sheds with dirt floors. Ate from the bush. Washed in the river.
And Dad slept every night outside on the ground.”
She went silent.
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