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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MOVEMENT ACROSS EDUCATION,
THE ARTS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Storying Social
Movement/s
Edited by
Louise Gwenneth Phillips
Tracey Bunda
Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education,
the Arts and the Social Sciences

Series Editors
Alexandra Lasczik
Faculty of Education
Southern Cross University
Bilinga, QLD, Australia

Rita L. Irwin
Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
This series is a new and innovative proposition in the nascent and growing
space of movement studies. Emerging and established scholars who are
beginning to work within the contemporary practices and methods of
movement, seek resources such as this series seeks to provide. Education is
very much tied up within an awareness of space and place, for example, a
school can begin to take on an identity of its own, with as much learning
taking place within its corridors and playgrounds as occurs in the class-
rooms. As learners interact with these environments through movement it
is essential for researchers to understand how these experiences can be
understood, allowing for a very interdisciplinary approach. This series spe-
cifically explores a range of movement approaches, including but not lim-
ited to walking research, a relatively new and exciting field, along with
several other paradigmic lenses. The series will be commissioning in the
Palgrave Pivot format.
Louise Gwenneth Phillips • Tracey Bunda
Editors

Storying Social
Movement/s
Editors
Louise Gwenneth Phillips Tracey Bunda
Faculty of Education Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Southern Cross University Studies Unit
Bilinga, QLD, Australia University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences
ISBN 978-3-031-09666-2    ISBN 978-3-031-09667-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09667-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
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­institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Pattern © Melisa Hasan

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
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To all activists who were, are and will be, for they teach and move many.
 Foreword

Scholar activists need to write about our concerns, and the most powerful
way to express ourselves is through our writings. Writing is a way to empower
us, to state that we are not victims and that we are attempting to find answers
and to solve problems. (Devon Abbott Mihesuah, P. 23)

This book contains chapters from an incredible group of activists who

present their concepts, ideas, understandings, and specific events via their
storying. It is they who have decided how and what would be written and
re-written and what would be revealed and hence shared with others.
Writing in this way enables us as readers a deeper understanding of the
issues, events, and thinking behind the writing connecting the storyteller
and the reader/listener and enabling meaning making by both. In essence,
they bring forward the story of themselves as activists to the story of the
activism.
As activist scholars they offer their individual unapologetic interpreta-
tions of events, theories, and understandings, and give testimony to their
lives, along with the movements they are intimately engaged within. They
present a montage of real struggles, and actions, and no one way to see or
understand. It is their stories that form part of our learning, and for those
who are activists, they offer deeper understandings and ways of working
and combating complex problems within the world. While there are

vii
viii Foreword

differences presented in their stories and in their activism, there are also
similarities. Their collective work offers a greater understanding of scholar
activists and demonstrates how much the role of activist is central to who
they are as people, and the core of their very being. I am in awe!

The University of Queensland Bronwyn Fredericks

St Lucia, QLD, Australia Pro-Vice-Chancellor
(Indigenous Engagement)

Reference
Mihesuah, D. A. (2003). Indigenous American women: Decolonization, empower-
ment, activism (1st ed.). Nebraska Press.
 Standing Foreword

What does it mean to stand up, stand against, stand with and stand for
some-thing in this moment we find ourselves? What does it mean to be
one who stands, one who under-stands, one who can with-stand and one
who takes a stand? The stories in this book stand. They stand strong, they
stand proud, they stand tall and they stand together—standing, anything
becomes possible. These stories of standing are stories that we rarely hear.
They are stories that we need to hear—over and over again, until we have
heard them. Standing, stories sneak up on truths we barely understand as
we try to figure them out in order to make a cruel world a more just and
bearable place. Standing, stories tell their own truths in their own way and
those speaking the stories are never left standing on their own.
My maternal grandmother’s family were coal miners in Cornwall,
women who remained standing long after their husband’s shoes were
placed on the kitchen table. Still today, there is an unwritten rule in my
house that new shoes are never to be stood on a table anywhere in the
house, not least of all the kitchen. I asked my Mum recently where this
custom had come from and she very proudly explained, “Well, it’s all to
do with your great grandfather, he was a Union man and a delegate to
boot”. I wish I knew more about my great grandfather—and my great
grandmother, the story is that she too stood for justice but by standing by,
with, for and up for the rights of women workers. This little-known story
of standing stands strong in the blood and bones of my memory. It has
stood the test of time and has often return to stand beside me in in my
own work as a Unionist feminist in the National Tertiary Education Union
(NTEU) of Australia. Standing: refusing to be a bystander even though

ix
x Standing Foreword

you know the work is hard and your feet are going to hurt. Standing:
holding your ground and position in places where the might and right of
power and privilege push you right onto the edges of fear and precarity.
Standing: an ethical and performative activist force which is not willing to
keep on going with the flow, regardless of the risk. Standing: with a mega-
phone in your hand and heart negotiating the right to speak to make sure
that others can. Standing: making a call and making a claim to something
because standing there in that moment matters in ways we can only begin
to imagine. Standing: because not standing is not standing at all—if some-
one is going to put my work boots on the kitchen table, I want them to
hear and hold right down to their blood and bones that right to the very
end I remained standing.
Stories of activism stand with courage and encourage others to tell their
own. Stories of activism stand with moral conviction and move us to think
and wonder about what living a more ethical life might be and become.
Stories of activism stand so powerfully, as Dorothy Allison suggests, they
will have to be heard, understood and acted upon (p. 177). Standing with
arms open wide, the stories of activism shared here provide us with a
moment to hear them, honor them and hold them with hope for what
might come to happen in the world, standing.

Faculty of Education Professor Liz Mackinlay

Southern Cross University
QLD, Australia

Reference
Allison, D. (1994). Skin: Talking about sex, class and literature. Firebrand Books.
 Preface

Once again, Tracey and Louise are storying. We, however, gather together
with others for storying.
But before we write of this gathered-together storying with others, we
locate ourselves, taking up the Indigenous Australian cultural/relational
practise of acknowledging country and people. We stand on ceremony
(Wilson, 2008).

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the country/land on which we write

and the various Aboriginal countries from which the various authors of this
book have contributed. We pay respect to Elders and all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples who have survived, struggled and thrived in providing
contribution to their own communities and to wider and global communities.
We too acknowledge the multitude of stories of the known, unknown and
never to be named Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander story tellers of these
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander countries for it is their stories which have
spoken, painted, sung and danced all countries into being. This work, over
thousands of generations, has allowed us to be the beneficiaries of the various
countries where we now stand to continue the art and act through, with and as
storying.

Here, we extend storying with movement. We position the notion of

movement broadly: conceptualising movement as activism, but we also
incorporate movement as the stories the bodies tell. We have curated this
book to tell stories that are often not heard or seen: these are the stories of
movement in the margins. We name this location not only for ourselves
but also for the contributing authors who write their stories from the

xi
xii Preface

spaces of being widely unknown, new and experienced writers, and from
places where the voices of their movement experiences have been muted
and sometimes silenced. And in the memory of bell hooks, this location—
the margins—is a site of radical possibility (hooks, 2015). The majority of
contributors in this book are not scholars but rather live their lives at a
distance from the academy, in worlds where their every day is a theoretical
practice—analysing the need of the world to be different, conceptualising
how this can be so, delving deeper through methodologies that decon-
struct, disrupt and by making reference to others to find the right ‘ah-ha,
yes this will work’ solutions. Theoretical lives are stories and all of the
stories in the book form and inform a place where our voices collect, shift-
ing to stand with each other, where we are moving/writing together. The
stories in the book speak of resistance for protecting the earth and coun-
try; that in creating space for those who are voiceless and powerless there
is creative intercept; in thinking deeply about being through an ethically
just care practice and how the choreographing of stories in dance main-
tains traditions for next generations. We propose that through the varied
contributions from Indigenous, youth, and diverse identities and commu-
nities in the following chapters, we gain insight into how on-the-ground
movements work to produce change through story. Story and movement,
we acknowledge, are never far from each other.

Bilinga, QLD, Australia Louise Gwenneth Phillips

St Lucia, QLD, Australia  Tracey Bunda

References
hooks, b. (2015). Feminist theory: From margin to centre. South End Press.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood
Publishing.
 Contents

1 Storying:
 The Vitality of Social Movements  1
Tracey Bunda and Louise Gwenneth Phillips

2 Learning
 with Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta Activism 19
Simone Tur

3 How
 Breaking the Rules Is Changing the World 47
Ella Simons

4 Kooriography:
 Revolutionary Acts of Dance 61
Mariaa Randall

5 Brotherhood
 of the Wordless: Voiceless Wonders 79
Alice Owen

6 Always
 Pull Your People Up with You: The Liworaji
Aboriginal Corporation 99
Lilly Davidson and Maria Davidson

7 Developing
 an Individuated Sensibility at the Margins117
Agli Zavros-Orr

Index147

xiii
 Notes on Contributors

Tracey Bunda is Academic Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland, Australia.
Lilly Davidson and Maria Davidson are Yuggera women and sisters
who have lived their lives and raised their families in Ipswich and Brisbane
since the 1950s. The sisters have extensive experience in working for gov-
ernment and non-government organisations including Save the Children
Fund, the Red Cross, Department of Education, Catholic Education and
Department of Human Services, with Lillian holding the position of
Manager for a shelter for the homeless for approximately ten years. Their
work experience combines with multiple decades of lived experience of
Aboriginal communities. As founding members of the Liworaji Aboriginal
Corporation, their passion is to advocate for those within the Aboriginal
community who do not have a voice, who are not seen and are
disempowered.
Alice Owen is a speech pathologist with 50 years of experience in a vari-
ety of settings in UK and Australia. She also is a qualified dance therapist
with 29 years of experience in private practice. Since 1991 her work has
mainly been with children and adults with complex communication needs
and movement difficulties and diversity. As she has a lifetime interest and
experience in the arts including dance, theatre, singing and creative writ-
ing, she has always incorporated the arts into her therapy.
Louise Gwenneth Phillips is an Associate Professor in Education at
Southern Cross, University, Australia.

xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Mariaa Randall belongs to the Bundjalung and Yaegl people of the Far
North Coast of NSW. She resides on the lands of the Djadjawurung in
Bendigo and works extensively on Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung coun-
tries in Melbourne. Mariaa is a 1997 NAISDA Dance College Graduate
and the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, obtaining
a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Arts Management, Graduate
Diploma in Performance Creation and a Master in Animateuring (by
Research).
Ella Simons is a 15-year-old school strike for climate (SS4C) organizers
based on Yalukit Willam land in so-called Melbourne. She helped organize
the most recent student strikes for climate action in Melbourne and con-
tinues organizing the movement on a local and national level. Ella has
been organizing with SS4C since the 2019 election, which for her was a
turning point in the urgency for climate action and the need for the youth
activist movement to step up. From a young age, Ella has always loved the
outdoors and visiting her grandparents.
Simone Tur is an Associate Professor, from the Anangu community in
north-west South Australia and resides on Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide. She is
the inaugural Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) at Flinders University.
Her previous leadership roles in higher education include Director of the
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research
from 2011 to 2015 and Associate Dean Tjilbruke Teaching and Learning
within Flinders’ Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement between
2015 and 2017.
Agli Zavros-Orr is an academic who advocates for an ethic of just-care in
educative contexts from an anti-bias approach. Agli is the founder of
diversitywise.com.au and undertakes advocacy and activist role within the
Victorian Intersex Expert Advisory Group (IEAG), is the chair for Intersex
Human Right Australia (IHRA), and Victorian Representative for Intersex
Peer Support Australia (IPSA).
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Ella being interviewed 53

Fig. 3.2 Ella at the Student Strike rally Melbourne, 21 May 2021 54
Fig. 4.1 I, dentity—Dancer Mariaa Randall. Photograph Jeff Busby 70
Fig. 5.1 Book cover of Triumph, revelation, transformation 95
Fig. 7.1 Journaling—Image by Agli 130
Fig. 7.2 Writing by Agli 135
Fig. 7.3 Collating by Agli 139

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Storying: The Vitality of Social Movements

Tracey Bunda and Louise Gwenneth Phillips

Abstract Story and storying have long held a compelling symbolic place
in social movements. We begin by sharing who we (Tracey and Louise) are
in story and social movements. We then set the scene for the book, with
our conceptualisation of storying movement by drawing from a/historical
and theoretical threads of stories, storytelling, activism, body, community,
and collective agency and how they knot together offering differing con-
figurations and wisdoms for being human. How story and movement hold
a long, entangled history together is discussed, elaborating on the five
principles we spoke for in storying research. We locate storying social
movements in new social movement theory as networked and collective
identities creating social change through story, told with words and bod-
ies. The power of dance in storying social movement is highlighted
through illustrations as the movement of social movements, provoking the

T. Bunda
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland,
St Lucia, QLD, Australia
e-mail: t.bunda@uq.edu.au
L. G. Phillips (*)
Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Bilinga, QLD, Australia
e-mail: louise.phillips@scu.edu.au

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
L. G. Phillips, T. Bunda (eds.), Storying Social Movement/s, Palgrave
Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social
Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09667-9_1
2 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

embodiment of change and transformation. Further, we acknowledge the

profound breadth of learning that takes place in activism and elevated/
illuminated through critical race theory, decolonisation, and feminist the-
orising in storying as a key vehicle for meaning making and communica-
tion. We close with an overview of the composition of this edited collection
of black and white storied social movements in Australia.

Keywords Storying • Social movements • Activism • Wilfulness •

Dance • Social movement learning theory

Who We Are in Story and Social Movements

Tracey: Stories of movement in the margins—from that which is not often
seen, to that which is generally not known, in those places deemed our
locations—that deny and disparage our efforts to sustain our being; in
places and spaces from which we are supposedly fixed; places and spaces
from which we cannot rise. I know this place. I remember this place, I
remember others’—Aboriginal others—memories of this place and I
remember too that this is a place not of our own choosing. And, in case I
forget, sometimes the coloniser will take me back to the temper of this
place to remind me of the margins, where I and other Aboriginal peo-
ples—Goories, in my language—should be. My first ‘coming into a sense
of political being’ recalls this place in visual memory of my family’s and
other Aboriginal families’ actual physical/geographical location of living
outside of town. If a line could be drawn from that place where my old
peoples were incarcerated, the old Salvation Army Mission—Purga—a
place where many Aboriginal families and their ancestors had been incar-
cerated, to the centre of town, then this line would mark the separation
between black and white. It was an invisible line leading from the place of
marginality to the town centre where plenty abided. This line was drawn
as a reminder from the white and the powerful to ensure that Aboriginal
families would know our place. Even after this Mission closed many
Aboriginal families and individuals stayed close to where it had once been
located. Black fellas live here, this was our place. As a child, this was my
Aboriginal world. Perhaps from the perspective of white others, the
wealthy white others who did not have to share this location with us, there
was a sense that these locations represented deprivation and there is no
doubt we were (economically) poor but we were made poor. The machi-
nations of colonisation made us poor and made sure we stayed poor
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 3

generation upon generation upon generation. This characterisation was

not however the totality of our lives in this location. There was, in this
location, a richness that existed through the practice of traditions and
knowledges that maintained strong senses of who we were as Aboriginal
peoples, as humans unto ourselves even if that acknowledgement was not
forthcoming from white others.
To this day I can recite where the Aboriginal families lived behind that
imaginary line. The act of recalling is made easier because the line was
often travelled by my family—when visiting with other families, when
acknowledging members of the other families journeying on that line,
when we travelled for school, work, and other business. I recall no
Aboriginal families living in town though I do remember my mother tell-
ing me of one Aboriginal woman, married to a white man, who did live
there. The movement of Aboriginal families, shifting from the margins, to
be in and close to the predominately white living suburbs wasn’t until
much later, perhaps not until the 1970s and 1980s. And with this address
came other colonising expectations that Aboriginal families did not always
abide by or hold to as an absolute truth. Having lived through the era of
false (gammon) protectionism, (I say gammon in my way of speaking,
because policies of protection were thinly veiled acts of isolation, depriva-
tion, and punishment) Aboriginal peoples had to live through the machi-
nations of assimilation—to be white, to act white, to deny who we were.
Ridiculous really, how could we be white and why would we want to be?
Though it would never have been thought of in this way and at that time,
and for some of the Aboriginal families it may still not be thought of in
this way, but our acts of resistance, individually and collectively, revealed
the tensions between black and white. The colonising ethos that worked
at every turn to subjugate, was always going to be contested and resisted
and it was. Aboriginal sovereignties were not sleeping and had never been
ceded. Seemingly small acts of resistance by Aboriginal families to exist
and keep our human-ness were upheld by our men and women maintain-
ing employment, even when that employment meant hard physical labours
in unsafe spaces of regularly occurring racist slight; in accessing education
for the younger generations who themselves were part of a pioneering
brigade that broke through low expectation and educational neglect; and
through our socio-cultural prowess and sophistication in the arts and on
the sporting fields. The margins, in concert with strong senses of ourselves
through sovereignty, through our own knowledge of being human, is the
place from where we stepped over that partitioning line. My own power
4 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

and privilege is as a direct result of those Aboriginal individuals and fami-

lies who stepped over that line. And I am grateful for that soulful courage.
Louise: As a fifth-generation white Australian travelling in India, when
I was 18, I was awakened to the lived realities of racism, sexism, and clas-
sism. On return, I searched for stories of the ongoing racism Aboriginal
Australian peoples have been (and continue to be) subjected to since colo-
nisation. January the next year was the bicentenary of the invasion of
Australia (1988), and I knew I had to join the largest protest in Sydney
(Gadi in Gadigal language) at the time to show my solidarity against the
genocide, violence, silencing, and lies this nation had been built on and
was celebrating with vile hypocrisy. I was honoured to walk with Aboriginal
Australian people, and continue to do so.
In winter that year, I was raped by a stranger in a park and kidnapped.
By 1990, I and two now dear friends formed a survivor’s advocacy group
(Social Conscious Against Rape and Sexual Assault—SCARS) and I
decided to write and publish my story of survival as a book. I knew then
that story had the power to make people think, empathise, and motivate
for social change. Across the many years it took me to write the book, I
would say when asked why I was writing the book, that many people
silently hold the trauma of rape and that the intimacy of reading another’s
story may offer some solidarity. There is much silence about rape: an invis-
ible lifelong injury to body, psyche, and relationships. In 1992, I was one
of the key speakers at the Sydney Reclaim the Night. I chose to share the
story of when I told my mother I had been raped. I stood on the side steps
of Sydney Town Hall facing a crowd of 5000 plus. The floodlights were
blinding. I couldn’t see faces to connect. I took myself back, narrating that
moment. The millenary audience held and heard my story and wept. The
book was published in 1994 (Phillips, 1994), with many media appear-
ances following. Responses to my storying told me that readers/ listeners
were affected. Lived stories catalyse empathy and social action.

Storying and Social Movements

In 2018, we defined ‘storying as the act of making and remaking meaning
through stories’, that ‘are alive and in constant fluidity as we story with
them’, constantly unfolding. We argued for ‘story as theory, as data, as
process, as text on the ethical grounds of accessibility and foregrounding
the marginalised’ (Phillips & Bunda, 2018, p. 7). For these qualities of
accessibility and voicing the margins and silenced, we see story and story-
ing hold an integral catalytic role in social movements.
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 5

For Aboriginal peoples, ‘stories are embodied acts of inter-textualised,

trans-generational law, and life spoken across and through time and place’
(p. 8). Social movements, in the lives of Aboriginal peoples have been and
continue to be, at once, out loud calls to community action that move to
harness collective senses of sovereignty and yet can also be subtle, quiet
gentle affirmations to individual spirits and bodies. There is in both, a
sense of being touched, never being the same again, transforming through
having been exposed to the movement.
In Louise speaking of being present at the 1988 protest march against
the white nation’s bicentennial celebration, I remember that I too was
present. As a young woman of 26, my activist pedigree was yet to be devel-
oped; however, I knew enough that I had to be in Sydney and participate.
A momentum was gathering, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
nations were activated from one end of the country to the other. You
could feel it in the air. We gathered and marched from Redfern; an inner
Sydney suburb known for having a large Aboriginal population to Hyde
Park in the city. This route was symbolic and purposeful. Other commu-
nity groups marched with us and banners were displayed in solidarity. The
Aboriginal flag could be seen flying from a tall building under construc-
tion. We chanted and cheered, caught up with family, and met new friends.
It felt euphoric, being part of a movement that was counted at approxi-
mately 50,000 people. This act of politicisation remade the meaning of
our being as one people, one cause, a history that would not be denied.
Two hundred years of white occupation paled in comparison to the mil-
lennia our peoples had lived and sustained our lands. For me, it was a
pivotal moment in my education, to stand with the mob, in unison for a
common cause. I would, from this time, continue to participate in pro-
tests. How could I not? My identity did not exist in a vacuum and the
struggle for our rights was righteous and remains so. Though political
protest on the street is infrequent to other forms of activism, this time was
foundational to the political and legal trek that we now march to resolve
the rightful place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through
treaty making as called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017).
As sociologist Francesca Polletta (2006) wrote in It was like a fever:
Storytelling in protest and politics, stories invite us to understand and feel
another’s perspective and empathise. We agree, we see that storying fore-
grounds bodies (sensation, emotions) and relationships. Polletta explains
that the stories that we tell ‘align our actions with our identities, often
subtly altering both. This is true of collective identities as well as individual
6 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

ones. In telling the story of our becoming, as an individual, a nation, a

people, we define who we are’ (p. 12). We respond to stories, by identify-
ing with protagonists, feeling their fear and pain, and relief at their escape
and undeniable release of psychic energy with the arrival of resolution.
There needs to be some element of familiarity to identify with and relate
to, to be affected, as we imagine ourselves in their situation. For these
powerfully evocative reasons of identity-making and empathising, stories
in social movements can be strategically promoted ‘to strengthen a collec-
tive identity, but they also may precede and make possible the develop-
ment of a coherent community or collective actor’ (Polletta, 2006, p. 12).
Further, ‘stories make explicit the cultural schemas that underpin institu-
tional practices’ (Polletta, 2006, p. 13). That is, they offer details of con-
texts and social discourses of what is and isn’t accepted, welcomed, and
condoned across societal rules, routines, and rituals, to fully comprehend
the injustice at stake that the social movement acts for.
From the five principles we spoke of for storying in research, we see
they too hold resonance in storying social movements.

• Storying nourishes thought, body and soul—not always good and com-
forting, but rather nourishment that strengthens human integrity,
broadening worldly understandings of the plights of others, so we
empathise, question biases and injustices and are motivated to act.
• Storying claims voice in the silenced margins—to hear their lived reali-
ties. Social movements are propelled by stories from those who have
experienced the silenced injustice that the movement cam-
paigns against.
• Storying is embodied relational meaning-making—in that in hearing
stories of injustices, we feel their pain, and come to understand the
lived effect of the injustice, we come to know through hearts and
minds coalescing.
• Storying intersects the past and present as living oral archives—so that
audiences come to feel and understand the injustice/s in the now.
• Storying enacts collective ownership and authorship—of the move-
ment, in which individual and collective stories illustrate the collec-
tive movement.

Artist, activist, historian, Puerto Rican Elder, Aurora Levins Morales

too sees great wisdom in stories in activism, as she explains in her book
Medicine stories: Essays for radicals (2019) that stories ‘make that shift
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 7

happen, but the successful ones all begin with the particulars of people’s
lives and follow them down into our shared root systems’ (p. 42). Social
movements work with ‘stories that show resistance’; ‘expose the underpin-
nings of domination’; ‘crack open lies and make complacency intolerable’;
‘build trust, allow catharsis, honour grief, validate rage, offer unexpected
and heart-melting examples of solidarity and bestow courage’ (Morales,
2019, pp. 42–43). Stories in social movements are carefully crafted with
consideration as to, what is ‘the most effective way to change how people
around us think?’ (Morales, 2019, p. 46). Organisers in collaboration with
others identify the story to tell to provoke audiences to ‘see different pos-
sibilities and make new choices. Doing this well means listening more than
making speeches—really hearing the narratives people are living by’
(Morales, 2019, p. 45). Such deep listening and motivation to organise for
activism involves ‘analyzing, creating, and disseminating stories, and doing
so with courage, keenness, skill, and cunning, with the clear purpose of
changing human consciousness in the direction of choosing justice—this
is what organizing is all about’ (Morales, 2019, p. 46).
For these reasons, we see story and storying as key catalysts and actions
in social movements.

Movement as Activism
In storying social movements, we are locating with activist work of what is
referred to as new social movement theory, that arose from post-1960s
social movements, networked or ‘disorganized’ movements, and collective
identities creation, with roots and connections to feminist theory, anar-
chist studies, geographies of resistance, labour movement history, sexual-
ity studies, political elements of cultural studies, queer studies, postcolonial
theory, dance and music activist studies, and race and ethnicity studies (see
Jordan et al., 2002). We see that the real grit of scholarship in social move-
ments is forged by organisers, and so we have invited organisers creating
social change through story as the honourable authors for this edited col-
lection. In a true commitment to storying, this book brings to the fore,
the blood, sweat, and tears of the lived realities of social movements. The
stories told across the following six chapters breathe the “who-ness” of
peripheral peoples, highlighting their uniqueness as political agents’
(Forment, 1996, p. 314). As political philosopher Hannah Arendt
(1958/1998) proposed, we can only know who somebody is by knowing
the story in which she or he is the hero, that is in which they show the
8 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

courage and ‘willingness to act and speak’, ‘to insert oneself into the
world’ (p. 186). The invited authors speak from experience of ‘willingness
to act and speak’ for and with peoples on the peripheries of dominant
society. They have demonstrated extraordinary wilfulness to create change
that has captured our attention and we feel deserve further attention
through publication in this book.
We see that central to the activism of social movements is wilfulness. As
feminist theorist Sara Ahmed (2014) traced feminist, queer, and antiracist
her/histories as being ‘those who are willing to be wilful’ (p. 134) citing
Alice Walker’s (2005) description of womanist as ‘outrageous, audacious,
courageous or wilful behaviour’ (p. xi) and Marilyn Frye’s (1992) descrip-
tion of radical feminism as ‘wilful creation of new meaning’ (p. 9) to name
a sample. Willing to be wilful. Wilfulness in ‘politics might involve not
only being willing to not go with the flow but be willing to cause its
obstruction’ (Frye, 1992, p. 161). A wilfulness to not be submerged in
the flow of dominant identities and ways of being, and to block those
flows through striking, as wilful bodies blocking traffic and economies. ‘A
history of wilfulness is a history of those who are willing to put their bod-
ies in the way, or to bend their bodies in the way of the will’ (Frye, 1992,
p. 161). As Rebecca Solnit (2003) writes, ‘Activism is not a journey to the
corner store; it is a plunge into the dark’. By this, Solnit (2003) is inferring
to the sensation of stepping into the unknown, of being wilful and straying
from or resisting the pack.
Collective identity is central to social movements and from a new social
movement position, particularly from a feminist and critical race theoreti-
cal position, we see collective identity as fundamentally political. The col-
lective identities of the social movements featured in this book we see as
‘fluid and relational’, involving acts of ‘perception and construction’
(Polletta & Jasper, 2001, p. 298). We recognise that this book fixes words
to pages at a point in time, but the words to define each social movement
will continue to be redefined according to circumstance, context, and
membership, ‘group definitions have no life of their own, and they are
constantly changing rather than static’ (Whittier, 1995, p. 15). ‘Any col-
lective identity developed in any movement must make space for a range
of standpoints, which may in turn be debated and contested as a part of
these processes’ (Maddison & Shaw, 2014, p. 418). Such is the liveliness
of the organic nature of social movements that stories can tell. No one
story can universally reveal the ‘who-ness’ of a social movement, but one
story can provoke an interest in the movement and an appetite for more.
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 9

We are uplifted by the Aboriginal women’s contributions in this book.

Aboriginal women writing of the political actions of other Aboriginal
women and of themselves articulate stories of struggle, challenge, and
liberation. Each draw on the tradition of Aboriginal women’s strength in
community, a tradition that is not dependent upon nor subservient to the
power exercised by Aboriginal brothers, fathers, uncles, etc. Within the
stories that are offered, there are being mapped, small but not inconse-
quential movements of resistance. Each story is imbued with a criticality
that affirms an Indigenous women’s standpoint (Moreton-Robinson,
2013) to acknowledge how colonising power is at play in the everyday.
These storying moments add to the larger historical storied collective of
Aboriginal protest and activism. Refusing to be assigned an assimilative
location as Randall, Davidson and Davidson have done in Chap. 4 or
refusing compliance with the white nation state imperative for mining as
the Kupa Piti Kungkas in Tur’s chapter (2) have done enacts a knowing
that a good is not a good for everyone (Simpson, 2014). In exposing that the
problematics of colonisation are unrelenting across time and characterised
by Australian contexts, the Aboriginal woman have moved to find real-life
solutions in decolonisation, emulating what Smith (2012) stipulates as the
necessary empowerment of Indigenous people to re-claim, re-name, re-­
write, and re-right. From point of contact, the Aboriginal decolonising
project has been to find social justice and peace through remembering old
ways, remembering the source of those knowledge systems, and the main-
tenance of those knowledges for translation to future generations.

Movement as the Stories Bodies Tell

Dance is literally the movement of social movements, the embodiment of
change and transformation. (Phillips-Fein, 2007, p. 422)

Dance contributes to social change, civic engagement, and activism in

multiple ways. As Diana Mills (2017) explains ‘At times the most dire and
seemingly hopeless situations give rise to novel and inventive ways of
mobilising the human body’ as ‘subjects who are deemed marginal in poli-
tics in and through verbal language find creative and inspiring ways to
show that they are never unequal to those who marginalise them’ (p. 12).
Think, for example, the Soweto gumboot dance that grew from the harsh
conditions of goldmine labouring in South Africa in the late nineteenth
century and the slapping of rhythms on gumboots became a keyway to
10 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

communicate in the dark mine shafts (Dixon, 1998). And influential

New York choreographer, Martha Graham, known for her political dances
created across the twentieth century titled ‘Immigrant, Vision of
Apocalypse, Revolt, and Steps in the Street’ provoking social critiques
(Bannerman, 1999).
As Mills further explains ‘Dance enables its participants to unravel a
new world, offering new opportunities for its participants. Those oppor-
tunities may be inhibited in other political worlds they occupy’ (2017,
p. 18). The Soweto gold mine gumboot dances offered a means of com-
munication between Xhosa, Sothu, and Zulu labourers not understood by
white bosses. Dance can be used in many ways to challenge and change
the status quo, as political dance offers an ‘embodied language … inde-
pendent of words’ (Mills, 2017, p. 15). Marginalisation on the grounds of
race, sexuality, faith, and class can be equalised through dance, as dance
‘allows for the performance of equality of some subjects that may have
been deemed unequal in politics articulated in words’ (Mills, 2017,
p. 102). Alternative spaces for equality can be created through dance, as
Dabke has offered Palestinians in resistance to Israeli human rights abuses
against Palestinians (Rowe, 2010) and we see in Koori-ography for Koori
Australian dancers that Mariaa Randall describes in Chap. 4. Randall
makes clear that her dance intimately connects her to the stories of her old
people, ancestors who danced to story cultural traditions. A tradition that
existed for millennia and one which continues in her making of Koori-­
ography. A place from which she can dance into being new traditions, ones
that question why her own I-dentity (Raandall’s emphasis) has been ques-
tioned, to allow the dance to speak back. A revolutionary act of dance, a
revolutionary act to make less heavy widely held colonising social con-
structions of Aboriginal subjugations through assimilation. In Koori-­
ography she dances off this burden and is liberated through re-connecting
to family and community. ‘Dancing contributes to cultural continuity,
playing an important role in resisting colonialism, imperialism, and cul-
tural obliteration’ (Phillips-Fein, 2007, p. 420). Each culture has different
symbolic codes and motifs in movement, yet the human body is univer-
sally relatable, offering potential for community and cross-cultural under-
standing for another’s oppression.

The moving body relates to the moved body, whether or not political-legal
structures are in place to enable this relationship and sustain this relational-
ity. Those moments of shared empathy enable the recognition through the
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 11

body of the underly- ing assumption of the human rights doctrine: that all
human beings are equal in dignity. (Mills, 2017, pp. 114–115)

Storied Learning Through Social Movements

We see storying in social movements as pedagogical, and recognise that
extraordinary learning takes place through activism, which is explicitly
studied in social movement learning theory and espoused in Paulo Freire’s
(1974) concept of conscientization. Social movements are recognised as
highly fertile spaces for purposeful generation and distribution of knowl-
edge and social and structural change (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991).
Recognition of learning in social movements emerged from the 1990s and
has mostly been published by academics (Harley, 2014). What we are
most interested in is the unlearning of racist, patriarchal, and colonial log-
ics and the learning of new ways of relating, being, seeing, and doing that
social movements create (Webb, 2019) and storying makes sense by those
in the movements themselves.

Marginalized groups have historically played significant roles in social move-

ments. Yet, often due to the perception of that group as having no political
status, informal or formal, even social movement literature did not account
for the historic narratives of this involvement. (Rodgers, 2021, p. 96)

We also see critical race theory (CRT) as being well situated with learn-
ing through social movements. Critical Race Theory (CRT) developed
among African American scholars (Delgado & Stefancic, 2005) to make
visible the power of whiteness in the everyday experiences of being black.
This theoretical work has translatability in the Australian context given
that persistent colonial constructions of race permeate the formation of
relations between Aboriginal and white peoples. The translatability, how-
ever, differentiates at the point at which Aboriginal ontological relation-
ships are defined in country. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1998) has argued that,

CRT becomes an important intellectual and social tool for deconstruction,

reconstruction and construction: deconstruction of oppressive structures
and discourses, reconstruction of human agency and construction of equi-
table and socially just relations of power. (p. 9)
12 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

CRT allows for understanding how race and racism are constructed and
embedded throughout societal institutions to create inequities. A key
component of CRT is found in the use of storytelling, for unmasking and
exposing racism, as an aspect of developing a CRT standpoint. The three
Aboriginal women’s stories included in this edition, read through the
CRT lens, are giving voice to their lived realities and for imagining other
ways of being. CRT has however been under attack with conservative
Australian Senator Pauline Hanson calling for the rejection of CRT from
the national curriculum (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2021). Her call follows the
US trend whereby 22 legislatures sought to ban CRT as a divisive element
in learning (Wong, 2021). Imagined senses that too much attention is
being paid to Aboriginal stories of colonisation, dispossession, and
Aboriginal truth-telling are the counter-stories that need to be heard, to
be moved from the margins to the centre.
Counter-storying in transformative critical pedagogy and critical educa-
tion studies has brought stories of gender, race, sexuality, and ability iden-
tity politics in social movements more into the public domain and in social
movement theory (understood as new social movements theory1). And
more recently intersectionality between domains of identity politics are
mobilised and researched, for which Terriquez (2015) offers the term
intersectional mobilization.
In the book, Children in Social Movements, Rodgers (2021) argues that
children have been a long-overlooked force in race, gender, sexuality, and
ability in social movements. Assumptions that children do not have ratio-
nal thought and agency have invisibilised their presence in political science
broadly (Bühler-Niederberger, 2010) and specific analyses of social move-
ments. Rodgers (2021) proposes that recognising children’s agency (as
does the sociology of childhood literature) and participation in social
movements enables greater understanding of the larger concept of agency
and social movements. Especially if social movements are recognised as
pedagogical through the collaborative, iterative, and dialogic processes as
Freire et al. described as ‘a pedagogy of desire’ (2007, p. 5), that is politi-
cal desire and dreams and an education of longing in a Pedagogy of Heart
(1997). Social movements desire and long for social change. Pedagogues
in social movements convoke radical imagination (Webb, 2019). Storying
of lived activism and imagined futures can do that. Recent works
published by Australian activists Sally Rugg (How powerful we are, 2019

1
Earlier social movements theory was largely class-based and framed by Marxism.
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 13

on the marriage equality campaign) and Jean Hinccliffe (Lead the way,
2021 on School Strikes 4 Climate movement) were written to document
and share their activism learning in making systemic change happen.

Overview of Chapters
We are all women as authors brought together in this book. We recognise
that women across the world, across history have and continue to be mar-
ginalised and silenced. Though none of the chapters are specifically on
women’s issues, the thread of recognition of women’s lived realities is
present through our authorship as women of across ages, black, white,
Jewish, and Cypriot migrant heritage. Across the time of curating this
edited collection, we have come to know these authors’ extraordinary pas-
sion, advocacy, and activism deeply and respectfully. We graciously honour
the stories they have shared. They are gifts that we think and know with,
in which ‘relations of thinking and knowing require care’ (Puig de la
Bellacasa, 2012, p. 198). We care for the authors, their stories, and the
movements they tell. We care that these stories are heard, so that more
empathise with the causes, and those who are affected by the injustices
build strength from knowing they are not alone.
In Chap. 2, Simone Tur, activist and academic, tells of the Irati Wanti
anti-nuclear campaign, a remembering of the fight to maintain sover-
eignty, to sustain Country as the specified tracts of land that determine
connection and identity, and to fight for Aboriginal people’s rights. The
Irati Wanti Anti-Nuclear Campaign is an important story that cannot be
left to linger unknown and unheard particularly when the world is so chal-
lenged by environmental and political instability. Here is an example of
Senior Aboriginal women fighting to protect Country for the spiritual
essence it provides in protecting stories. These Senior Aboriginal women
stand up in Country, as sovereign Aboriginal women do to speak against
uranium mining and political and economic indifference to the
consequences.
In Chap. 3, Ella Simons, youth climate change activist stories how her
location and ancestry shaped her commitment to the climate justice move-
ment from her late primary school years. Her story is a story of becoming
an activist, organiser, and media spokesperson, as a child and school stu-
dent with reduced access to civic institutions and independence.
In Chap. 4, Mariaa Randall, Kooriographer/choreographer, fore-
grounds embodied Aboriginal knowledges as the foundation for
14 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS

movement as activism. Through storied dance (Kooriography), Mariaa

tells of the losses and disconnections inflicted by British possession and
massacres on I-dentity (a fine line of uncertainty) in Aboriginal Australian
people’s identities in contemporary contexts. We feel the intimacy of
movement in Mariaa’s embodied storying as a Koori woman for Aboriginal
women treading the tightrope between two worlds.
In Chap. 5, Alice Owen, disability rights activist and dance and speech
therapist, stories with The Brotherhood of the Wordless, a group of cre-
ative writers with physical disabilities including the inability to use oral
speech to communicate. Through poetry crafted with individualised assis-
tance to communicate via typing, The Brotherhood tells of life in disabled
bodies. With the process of creative writing and assisted typing,
Brotherhood members have at last been recognised as people with some-
thing to say. Their movement into and with the Arts world (as opposed to
the pathologised Disabled world) welcomes and applauds their talents, so
that they finally feel valued and enabled to advocate individually and as a
group for changes in the way the Disabled world operates.
In Chap. 6, Lily and Maria Davidson orate their lives and the influences
of their activist parents for their own activism to help others disenfran-
chised with the community. As sisters, their activism for assisting members
of the community to reconnect, wade through struggle, and reconcile
long-held pain are the storied attempts to allow individuals, families, and
communities a vestige of wellness and to find strength. We stand with the
sisters and bring their stories from the margins to the centre to give voice
to the healing effects of the gentleness and care in their movements.
In Chap. 7, Agli Zavros-Orr, inter-sex human rights activist, autoeth-
nographically stories through journaling, visual re-presentations, and
poetry their individuated sensibility for and with an ethic of just-care. Their
authorial voice unashamedly talks back at the western, patriarchal socio-­
political-­medico landscape their lived realities of being intersex intertwined
with their intersex human rights work. Agli offers a generative reflexively
meditative response of inward and outward movement through entangled
thinking, feeling, and doing inviting rethinking of ethics and hupomne-
maticing (artful self-journaling).
Each chapter contributes thinking, knowing, and being about story
and movement. Relationships with the authors show momentum in col-
lective movements affirming direction. As we did in Research Through,
With and as Storying (2018), we two have gathered. We have called upon
our friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to contribute stories to this
 1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 15

edited collection. The authors story their movement. In respect of their

work and writing and as we have done for each other in our first co-­
authored book, we respond at the end of each chapter, with the authors
we worked closest with, forming a new ‘together’ with the individual
authors and sustaining theoretical threads through the book. In taking up
this practise again, we give thanks to the authors, ensuring that their
movement from the margin to the centre is seen and known but moreover
is the Indigenous relational practice of reciprocity—for that which has
been given, then something of equal value is given back. Balance is found.
We stand together.

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 CHAPTER 2

Learning with Kupa Piti Kungka

Tjuta Activism

Simone Tur

Abstract Indigenous activism within Australia has a long history since

colonisation and is inclusive of the fight for land rights, native title, and
more recently constitutional recognition for Indigenous peoples through
the delivery of the Uluru Statement of the Heart. The Irati Wanti Anti-­
Nuclear Campaign is such an example of Senior Aboriginal women fight-
ing to protect Country as a sovereign right. This chapter is an honouring
of the fight taken up by the senior Kungkas (Aboriginal women) to the
then Federal government’s proposal to build a radioactive waste reposi-
tory on Country in South Australia. The Kungkas, to whom Simone has
kin connection, knew well of the impacts of nuclear testing which the
British exercised in South Australia in the 1950s. The Campaign brought
into sharp relief the differing value systems afforded to the desert—for one
a site for dumping and for the other, the site of home. This is the story of
the Kungkas’ resistance told by one who is kin of the younger generation

S. Tur (*)
Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA, Australia
e-mail: simone.tur@flinders.edu.au

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Switzerland AG 2023
L. G. Phillips, T. Bunda (eds.), Storying Social Movement/s, Palgrave
Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social
Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09667-9_2
20 S. TUR

and who as an educator thinks deeply on her senior women’s actions to

inform the contemporary movement to decolonise.

Keywords Anangu • Irati wanti • Indigenous sovereignty • Kungka

• Silent activism • Activist

Cultural Warning: References are made to members of my community

who have passed away. Out of cultural respect, when I refer to family and
community members who have passed away, I will use the cultural term
Kunmanara.

Locating Self in Social Movement

I am the embodiment of Anangu1 Aboriginal person. Since birth I have
maintained my connection to Country and community—I have enacted
my responsibility and connection. I am same and different. My story is
embedded in my family’s story.
This story was sung into being. Singing is important to me—it is a key
medium for how I communicate as an Indigenous person, community
member, learner and teacher, activist, and performer. In a sense, singing is
a way of ‘being’ for myself and my community. The act of singing con-
nects me to Country through my Elders and family. It is a sensory and
literal embodied experience. Singing resonates. It allows me to say some-
thing important and also to feel Anangu ways of knowing from long ago
to the contemporary, in my body.Song and singing are like narrative part-
ners. They allow crucial and thoughtful ways of transmitting ideas of
being, in this case from the perspective of an Anangu Woman—grounded
in the teachings of Elders and Knowledge Holders within my community.
I see teaching as performative (hooks, 1991, 1994) and singing is an
important performative element in how I teach. Singing is central to my
professional experience in public performance in theatre and collective
creative work with colleagues.

1
Person in Yankunytjatjara language.
 2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 21

Irati Wanti2—Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta3

The poison, leave it
‘We Said NO straight away’
1998: The federal government announced a plan to build a national
radioactive waste dump in South Australia. Identified site Billa Kalina region,
central north South Australia. (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown,
2005, p. 10)

Indigenous activism within Australia is associated with the fight for rec-
ognition of Indigenous people’s rights, connection to Country, and sov-
ereignty. The Irati Wanti Anti-Nuclear Campaign is such an example of
Senior Aboriginal women fighting to protect their Country as a sovereign
right. The following story reflects these struggles and successes and
addresses questions of: What does it mean to become knowledgeable from
an Anangu woman’s community standpoint, and does activism inform
Indigenous decolonising praxis? In this chapter, I acknowledge the Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuta and particularly my Senior Knowledge Holders, many
of whom have now passed away: Kunmanara Crombie, Kunmanara
Brown, Kunmanara Watson, Kunmanara Wonga, Kunmanara Stuart,
and members who are still campaigning, Ngunytju4 Emily Munyungka
Austin and Kami5 Lallie Lennon. I also acknowledge all the Kungkas6 and
their activism who have passed and those who continue to protect their
Country: my late Mother Mona Ngitji Ngitji Tur, Kamuru Lester, Kami
Lucy Lester, Rose Lester and Karina Lester, and the Yankunytjatjara
Native Title Corporation. I also acknowledge Umoona Aged Care at
Coober Pedy for their ongoing support in my research when I spent time
with my Waltjapiti7 at the aged care centre.

We are the Aboriginal women. Yankunytjatjara, Antikarinya and Kokatha …

We know the Country. (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 12)

2
The poison, leave it in Yankunytjatjara language
3
The Many Women from Coober Pedy in Yankunytjatjara language
4
Mother in Yankunytjatjara language.
5
Grandmother, great aunt in Yankunytjatjara language.
6
Women in Yankunytjatjara language.
7
Extended or full family, groups, or gathering of relations in Yankunytjatjara language.
22 S. TUR

Learning by Example
This chapter follows in the footsteps of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, Irati
Wanti campaign, and the Senior Anangu Women’s activism. I critically
reflect on the significance of inter-generational transmission of knowledge
activism as part of an Embodied Activist Pedagogy. I discuss how the
ontology of Ngapartji-Ngapartj8 grounded my participation in The
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission authorized by the South Australian
Government in 2016, as a responsibility within my community context,
which honoured the teaching of the Senior Women and their campaign.
What follows is a collective story: words embedded with memories, and
knowledge past and present which is ethical—as it should be—and embod-
ied in my telling, through word and action. This story is not possible
without the knowledge, guidance wisdom and activism of those acknowl-
edges above and the many others who share and contribute their stories.

Activism and Embodied Pedagogy: Theory, Protocol,

and Priority

In Breaking the Boundaries: Australian Activists Tell Their Stories, Allen

and Noble (2016, p. 1) ask, ‘What makes an activist?’ This is an important
question. It is a question connected to practices of transformation and
connects to Aboriginal activism, which, I argue, can provide critical
insights into what it means to be Indigenous and especially an engaged
Indigenous academic in contemporary Australian education. This chapter
considers and supports the proposition that scholarly activism contributes
to necessary knowledge production from an Indigenous perspective.
Allen and Noble (2016) describe the qualities which underpin activism.
These include ‘thoughtfulness, courage and creativity, all underpinned by
the values and beliefs of social justice, human rights and sustainability’
(p. 1). What is common amongst all activists, say Allen and Noble, is the
commitment for change:

We want to encourage people to do something when they see a need for

change. The first step is often the hardest; but ordinary people can do
extraordinary things, and working together we can make a difference. (p. 3)

8
Mutual Reciprocation; In return; later I’ll give you something in return, give and give-in-
return in Yankunytjatjara language.
 2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 23

These features and the overall purpose outlined here are certainly true,
but Indigenous activism requires one step more.
Allen and Noble’s descriptions of activism are a beneficial reference
point in analysing the Irati Wanti campaign. However, for Indigenous
activists within their Country, I would argue that sovereignty through
connection to and ‘caring as Country’ (Rigney & Hemming, 2014) is a
critical characteristic to add to their definitions. Aboriginal accounts of
activism as ‘Indigenous sovereign acts’ performed as part of complex and
obligatory caring practices within Australia are important to the broader
intellectual contribution made by Indigenous people to civil discourse.
Allen and Noble (2016) and Ollis (2012) offer beneficial critiques; how-
ever, analysis of activism through ‘race’, racialisation, and white race privi-
lege within Australia (Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Nicoll, 2007;
Tannoch-Bland, 1998)—as identified discourses of social justice and
human rights critique—is needed to understand activism as necessary
Indigenous sovereign practice. Its connection to the concept of caring ‘as’
Country takes readings of activism into what has been referred to else-
where as Black space.
The Irati Wanti campaign, for example, has contributed to bridging
the gap between generic activist practices and methods and Indigenous-­
specific activist objectives of putting First Peoples first. In doing so, it has
been influential statewide, nationally, and internationally in shaping the
expression and what I call the ‘performance’ of public policy—in this case,
around the disposal of nuclear waste as a matter of infringement of Anangu
and therefore Indigenous sovereignty.
The Irati Wanti campaign is about human rights globally, uranium
mining, and nuclear waste storage, beginning from the position of ‘locat-
edness’ and extending its influence beyond one, to many, locations. This
is at once a local and an international matter. In the Kupa Piti Kungka
Tjuta resistance, they show that the local must meet global world issues in
relation to nuclear energy, mining, and storage. Whether through ‘silent’
activism, protests, public discourse on injustices, film, or creative praxis
activism, such ‘acts’ are always political. Performing activism is not with-
out its risks, or its losses, but activism can change lives and be life-­changing.
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta demonstrate this grounded commitment to
their community and their conceptualisation of nation and nations. In the
Kungkas’ words: We lost our friends. Never mind we lost our loved ones.
We never give up. Been through too much. Too much hard business and
still we keep going. Sorry business all the time. Fought through every hard
24 S. TUR

thing along the way. People trying to scare us from fighting, it was hard
work, but we never stopped. When we were going to Sydney, people say,
“You Kungkas cranky, they might bomb you”, but we kept going (Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuṯa, 2005, p. 116).
A group of Senior Aboriginal Women can make a change. Here is their
story: it is the act of raising awareness as a sovereign, located, embodied,
and ‘performed’ activist pedagogy.

Raising Public Awareness and Focusing Attention by

Speaking Out Strong
In 1998 the Australian Federal Government, under Prime Minister John
Howard, announced the ‘plan to build a national radioactive dump waste
dump in South Australia’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 10).
The proposed location was Billa Kalina which spans:

most of central-north South Australia … [and] includes the Woomera

Prohibited Area, the townships of Roxby Downs, Andamooka and Woomera,
and an extensive network of salt lakes. The region is very close to the Great
Artesian Basin and Coober Pedy.

From the start of the announcement, the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta said
‘NO’. Irati Wanti—‘The poison, leave it’. This was grounded in the
Senior Women’s knowledge and responsibility to and ‘as’ Country and a
result of direct family effects from the Maralinga atomic bomb tests
(1950–1960s) (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 78) on their
waltjapiti (family), Country, physical and spiritual well-being. The
Kungkas spoke out and did not stop telling their stories. They said:

We take our responsibilities very seriously toward: the land, the Country,
some of the special places, we know them the Tjukur9—the important sto-
ries of the land the songs that prove how the land is the Inma-song and
dance of the culture, all part of the land as well the bush tucker that we
know and do our best to teach the grandchildren, and even tourists when we
have the chance preserving the traditional crafts; the wira- wooden bowl,
wana-digging stick, punu-music sticks, and even kali-boomerang, that our
grandmothers have passed down to us through generations the language the

9
Story, Dreaming in Yankunytjatjara language.
 2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 25

family, that members have respect for one another. ‘All this is law’. (Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 6)

These strong words, almost like a manifesto, make clear to the listener
the responsibility and deep knowledge of Country, and the importance of
inter-generational knowledge transmission as ‘embodied’ and enacted
sovereignty.
Audre Lorde (1980) says:

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to
me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it
bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any
other effect.

The Kungkas understood this and knew the importance of making

their worries about uranium known to the world: ‘We bring our worry, the
waste dump, here for support’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005,
p. 72), they said. It was not a time to be silent. It was a time to be strong
and strategic. The connection of ‘worry’ and ‘support’ is important. The
Kungkas wanted change, but they needed allies to open Anangu histories
and logic.
As Vincent (2007a) too reflected on the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta’s
activism and cultural responsibility acknowledging the strategic approach
the Senior Women undertook to fight the federal and South Australian
governments and that never faltered in what I would call ‘Aboriginal
women’s sovereign standpoint position’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2013) in
relation to the proposed sites. Vincent saw that the sharing of ‘counter-­
narratives’ transcended ‘cultural boundaries’. I agree with this and con-
sider the Kungkas’ activism was grounded in humanity as a struggle that
was not only important for Anangu but for all Australians.

The Kungka Tjuta did not accept they were powerless to change the course
of the waste repository project ‘the government’ planned to impose on
them. Talking and travelling became methods of articulating counter-­
narratives, which radically disrupted the federal government’s unconvincing
story. The counter-narratives resonated with many non-Indigenous
Australians and forced an epistemological contest between different ways of
knowing the Country. (Vincent, 2007b, p. 164)
26 S. TUR

Articulating the Counter-narrative: Inma

The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta didn’t just tell their story, they sang their
story through inma, at public meetings such as the Australian Conservation
Foundation at the Adelaide Town Hall and Olympic Dam in 1999 (Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 22). The Inma words demonstrate
knowledge and understanding of Country and the responsibility to leave
uranium in the ground: ‘Eileen Brown and Lucy Wilton sing Inma.
“That’s exactly what the song says; I left it [irati-poison] in the ground,
you leave it in the ground”’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005,
p. 25). My Kangkuru, Karina Lester explains for Kunmanara Brown her
grandmother, the significance of Inma: ‘They know singing for the land
and doing the dance for the land is healing the land’ (Kupa Piti Kungka
Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 86).
The Kungkas took their message online through the development of
the Irati Wanti website and short documentary ‘Irati Wanti’ (Kupa Piti
Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, pp. 39–40), with the support of key peo-
ple, as part of their campaign of raising public awareness about their fight
against the government. These were just some of their initiatives to get
their message into the public domain. The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta also
connected with other Aboriginal communities in Australia who were hav-
ing to deal with the prospects of uranium exploration within their Country.
The following letter shares their concern and support:

Dear Jawoyn People, Hello. We are the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta. We are the
Senior Aboriginal Cultural Women in Coober Pedy, South Australia. We are
dropping you a line to let you know about our struggle against the uranium
and how we are standing up strong for our Country. We are writing to let
you know that uranium is dangerous and not to give them the right of way.
(Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 44)

From International peace walks (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown,
2005, p. 98) and road trips, to festivals, postcards, and posters, to letters
to politicians, the Kungkas were ‘talking straight out’: ‘initiating or join-
ing action groups, protests, boycotts and campaigns to bring about
change’ (Allen & Noble, 2016, p. 2).
Echoing Vincent’s (2007a) words, the Kungka Tjuta weren’t power-
less. In fact, the Kungkas became strategic lobbyists who formed many
important relationships, connections, and networks with communities of
 2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 27

like-minded individuals and groups who held and supported their perspec-
tive on caring for Country and anti-nuclear philosophy and action. The
Kungkas understood the importance of collective views. The Kungkas
called on Sister Michele Madigan to support the administration of the
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta as an incorporated body (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa
& Brown, 2005, p. 6). They were able to voice and promote their con-
cerns to local politicians (such as the ‘greenies’ as the Kungkas called
them) and organisations such as Friends of the Earth (p. 16). They spoke
at public events and conferences, such as the 1998 Global Survival and
Indigenous Rights conference in Melbourne and, following this confer-
ence, formed a strong alliance with a group of ‘young non-Aboriginal
women’ from whom the Kungkas sought support. They came to be known
as the ‘Melbourne Kungkas’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown,
2005, p. 20).
The outcome of the Irati Wanti campaign was successful. In July 2004,
the government abandoned its plans, and this resulted in legislation being
introduced in South Australia to prohibit the construction, operation, and
importation of nuclear facilities, storage, and waste. The Irati Wanti cam-
paign was fundamentally about Indigenous and human rights, and politi-
cians and the public recognised that (Allen & Noble, 2016, p. 2). The
success of the Irati Wanti campaign led to changes in state legislation.
Sections from the South Australian Nuclear Waste Storage Facility
(Prohibition) Act 2000, Acts 8, 9, and 13 of the legislation listed below
show this:

8—Prohibition against construction or operation of nuclear waste storage

facility;9—Prohibition against importation or transportation of nuclear
waste for delivery to nuclear waste storage facility;13—No public money to
be used to encourage or finance construction or operation of nuclear waste
storage facility. (Government of South Australia, 2000, p. 3)

Media reported the government’s new legislation after the Federal

Court ruling of 2004:

[T]he federal government abandoned the plan to build a radioactive dump

in SA. The decision reflected the strength and persistence of the campaign
against the dump. The victory was also helped by the ruling of the full bench
of the Federal Court in June 2004 that the government had illegally used
28 S. TUR

the urgency provision of the Land Acquisition Act. (Australian Map of

Nuclear and Uranium Sites, 2017)

The Kungkas’ response expressed the truth: ‘We are winners because of
what’s in our hearts’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 12).

Activism, Embodiment, and Healing

I joined the campaign and was mentored by members of the Kungkas. I
was privileged to attend some of the campaign events including at the
Adelaide Town Hall and an afternoon tea at the South Australian
Parliament House with members of the Labor, Liberal and Democrat par-
ties. I acknowledge my kinship relationships with the Kungkas and their
teachings which shape me today. Kinship is important to activism—but it
means different things in different contexts.
As an Indigenous person, I grew up understanding the importance of
survival, resistance, and activism in response to ‘race’ relations in Australia,
imposed policies of Protection and Assimilation and land rights. These
were and continue to be part of the ‘Indigenous everyday’. I may have not
always understood the significance of these experiences; however with age,
family and professional experience, community grounding, and also
through profound loss, coming to understand and voice the story of these
experiences has become part of my ‘being’, my pedagogy (drawn from
ontology) and standpoint. Aboriginal people understand the complex
relationship with the state and its underpinning institutions and pervasive,
often oppressive cultural practices. Lifelong activism and resistance are
therefore relevant to the lives and education of Indigenous people and
their communities, locally, nationally, and internationally. They are ways of
survival. In this respect, they are affirmation practices.
I see activism or resistance for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people as part of the everyday within racialised societies in
Australia: an unavoidable way of being in the world. If it is part of the
everyday, then healing is necessary. Telling your story and talking straight
out become healing acts of activism.
Indigenous Australian activism and resistance in relation to Indigenous
land rights and sovereignty, in the context of the dispossession of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people and the ‘white possessive logic’ (Moreton-­
Robinson, 2015) within settler-colonial Australia, is necessary—for those
 2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 29

who are oppressed, but also for those for whom hegemony has been
‘naturalised’.
The Irati Wanti campaign demonstrates the lived, inter-generational
experience of that necessity: that knowledge of and being in Country are
important; that nuclear waste storage is unhealthy; that harming the
manta 10 means that ‘our’ ancestral, spiritual, and physical well-being is
affected; that telling your story is important in the praxis of activism; that
an Indigenous Embodied Activist Pedagogy does offer counter-­knowledges
(through counter-narratives) to those preferred by dominant systems.

Enactment, ‘Situatedness’, and ‘Really

Useful Knowledge’
My experience with the Kungkas and Irati Wanti has taught me what this
‘politics of radiation’ might be. It involves the ‘radiation’ of ‘charged’
ideas fuelled by motivations for change and transformation discussed so
far—focused emotion, embodied presence, speaking position, gender,
situationality, and locatedness—alongside considered and well-theorised
anti-racist discourse and an understanding of the complexities and particu-
larities of Indigenous epistemologies in relation to kinship groups, com-
munity, and Country. Further analysis of activism and Indigenous
resistance needs to be understood from these multiple perspectives, but
the Irati Wanti experience provides a real-world example of inter-­
generational effective and affective resistance from which to work and on
which to build.
I do see distinctions and nuances between meanings of activism and
resistance within Indigenous Australia arising from and based on a spec-
trum of relationships between the colonised and the coloniser. For many
Indigenous peoples—and this is reflected within my own family, personal
and community stories—resistance to colonialism is more than ‘just a way
of life’, as described by Ollis in her characterisation of a ‘lifelong activist’
(Ollis, 2012, p. 57). Activism from an Indigenous perspective needs to be
understood through inter-generational, resistive, assertive, sovereign
responses to colonialism and dispossession of Indigenous peoples from
our lands in general and in particular. We never have ceded our connec-
tion to Country, sky, and waters. I consider that resistance, as a general
and Country-specific practice, informs activism as a significant
10
Earth in in Yankunytjatjara language.
30 S. TUR

characteristic when constructing an Indigenous Embodied Pedagogy,

from a lived as well as theorised decolonising foundation of ‘race’ and
racialisation.

Activism, Embodiment, and Inter-Generational

Practice: The Royal Commission, 2015
The need to talk strong continues, both for the Senior Women and for my
generation. In February 2015, the South Australian Government
announced a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission to investigate the
‘Exploration, Extraction and Milling, Further Processing and Manufacture,
Electricity Generation, and Management, Storage and Disposal of Waste’
(Government of South Australia, 2015).
In the same year, a public exhibition was held at the Adelaide Festival
Centre honouring and remembering Maralinga atomic bomb tests and the
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, Irati Wanti campaign, titled Talking Straight
Out: Images and Insights from the Campaign that Stopped South Australia
from Becoming a Nuclear Waste Dump.
The women sent out their message:

Dear Friend of the Irati Wanti campaign,

Emily Munyungka Austin, Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, and Karina Lester,
granddaughter of Eileen Kampakuta Brown, invite you to attend a spe-
cial event:
October 15, 2015, marks 62 years since the first atomic bomb test at Emu
Junction, South Australia. The Kungka Tjuta remember, “All of us were liv-
ing when the Government used the Country for the bomb. Everybody got sick …
They thought they knew what they were doing then …” In February 1998 the
federal government announced its plan to build a national radioactive waste
dump in the South Australian desert. In March a council of senior Aboriginal
women from Coober Pedy, the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, made an announce-
ment of their own. “We say no radioactive waste dump in our ngura—in our
Country”.
For six years the women travelled the Country, talking straight out. They
called their campaign Irati Wanti. “We all say enough is enough. Irati wanti—
the poison leave it”.
They explained, they demanded, they marched and sang. They told of
extraordinary personal histories. They worked with greenies and wrote pas-
sionate letters to politicians.
They won.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
be so hard as to let them be captured again, and be taken back to
that living death. No, they would never be captured alive, no never
again. Then the thought of all their aims and ambitions with the
Commune, the strife and bloodshed in their beloved Paris made their
hearts cry “enough”; if the great God above them would grant them a
safe return to their homes and loved ones, they would live in peace
with all men.
On the fourth day the wind veered into the south east, and cleared
up fine. Observations gave our position three hundred miles from
Newcastle. On the fifth day the wind shifted into the south, reducing
our speed to five knots an hour. After consulting with the mate, the
captain decided not to continue on a direct course, but to stand in
towards the land and take advantage of the current setting towards
the southward. The fugitives grew very restless when they found out
the alteration of the course, and Captain Law had great difficulty in
making them see that it was for their safety that we should get inside
the three mile limit in case of eventualities, but nothing occurred to
alarm us, and we had a fine run right up to Newcastle, a seven days
run from Noumea.
The authorities and citizens of Newcastle gave the fugitives a very
hearty welcome, and showered congratulations upon them at their
daring escape from exile and prison. They put up at the Great
Northern Hotel and soon supplied themselves with clothing, etc.,
suitable to their position. Then they telegraphed home the news of
their freedom and need of funds. They stayed a few days at
Newcastle and then went on to Sydney there to await the remittance
that was wired back to them at once.
On its arrival Henri Rochefort at once paid Captain Law the
amount that had been agreed upon for their deliverance, what the
actual amount was I do not know, but each of the crew received £4
10s. as their share, and with this, I, for one, was very satisfied.
 CHAPTER XXIII

A Leaky Old Tub and Retribution or Villainy

Rewarded

After staying on shore in Newcastle for three weeks, during which

time I had a good holiday and spent most of the money I possessed,
I joined the barque “Edinburgh” bound for Wellington, New Zealand,
with a cargo of coals. Well, of all the old tubs that ever sailed on salt
water, this old craft was the worst. Every two hours we had a twenty
minutes’ spell on the pumps, night and day the game went on, in fact
we could truly say we carried the leaky old basket on our arms.
There was no time lost in painting these colonial ships. There was
plenty of other work to do without that, nearly all the passage was
spent in fitting and roping new cargo baskets ready to discharge the
coal on our arrival at Wellington. The weather was just splendid all
the way across, which was fortunate for us, just a gentle seven knot
breeze, with a smooth sea and a perfectly cloudless sky. The sea,
when we had time to notice it, was a beautiful ultra-marine, and at
night the stars were reflected like diamonds in a sea of glass. The
waters were simply alive with fish, and at night, as they moved about
in the star-lit waters, they left a phosphorescent trail behind them,
like a design drawn upon a blackboard with a silver pencil.
Captain Saunders, or “Black Saunders” as he was called by
colonial seamen, was a sturdy, well-built man, with jet black curly
hair and beard. He was a thorough seaman, and never so happy as
when he was paddling about in salt water. The mate, Archie McLeod,
was a Scotchman and hailed from Glasgow, but had been sailing out
of Sydney for a number of years. He was, without a doubt, one of the
finest specimens of physical manhood I ever saw, quite six feet in
height, trained and proficient in all kinds of athletic sports, and a first
rate boxer for sport, but in general a very quiet, amiable sort of
shipmate. The second mate was a young native of Sydney, not much
of a sailor, but that was from want of experience and not from want of
ability. Our crew consisted of eight able seamen—three English and
three colonials—and two Swedes. The pay was seven pounds a
month, and we signed to work eight hours per day in port, but when
unloading coal the crew were given the privilege of working all night
and were paid extra, so that we made very good money indeed.
After we had finished unloading our coals at Wellington, news
spread around the town that gold had been found on the Thames
river near Auckland, and that hundreds of people were flocking there.
At once there was a rush, and four of our sailors cleared out and
joined the throng en route for the gold fields. To replace them, the
captain picked up four men who had just run away from a ship in
Wellington, and who wanted to get over to Australia. They were not
long on board before they began to bully the sailors in the forecastle.
Evidently they were a set of scoundrels that the ship they had left
was well clear of.
We hauled away from the jetty after tea, and anchored in the bay
ready to sail in the morning. At daylight the mate called all hands out
to heave up the anchor. None of the crew turned out, saying they
were sick. The mate quietly told them that he would give them five
minutes to get out on deck, if they were not out in that time he would
kick them out.
“All right, Mr. Mate,” one of them answered, “try it, we’ll soon take
the kick out of you.”
Just then I went into the forecastle to light a lamp for the chain
locker.
“Drop that lamp, you son of a b—— sea cook,” snarled one of
them, “or I’ll jolly well jump the stuffing out of you.”
“Were you speaking to me?” I asked him.
“Yes, blast you, I was,” he replied.
In an instant my blood was up, and I sprang over to him. Thrusting
the lighted lamp into his face, I poured the oil over him, and set fire to
his bed, as he tried to get up I beat him back with the lamp until his
bed was all in a wild blaze. His three mates came to his assistance
and the two Swedes came to mine, and for a few minutes there was
a frightful pandemonium. The mate rushed forward when he heard
the row, and called out to us to put the fire out at once. This was
soon done, and we were ordered to heave up the anchor
immediately. The newcomers looked sulky and inclined to refuse, but
as there was no boat alongside, and they were likely to get roughly
handled, they thought better of it, and turned to, though with a bad
grace, and we were soon under weigh with all sail set, heading for
Cook’s Straits.
That evening the breeze freshened into a living gale, and we had a
dead beat down to Cape Farewell, which headland we passed on the
fifth day out. To make matters worse the vessel was leaking like a
basket, and the pumps had to be kept going night and day.
After rounding Cape Farewell, the barque was headed south, and
was soon wallowing in a heavy cross sea. We were fagged out with
pumping, and as we drew near to Foveaux Straits, all hands walked
aft and begged the captain to put into the Bluff Harbour for shelter
until the weather moderated. The captain, however, hoping to run out
of the bad weather when he got south of the Straits, refused to put
back. We refused to work the pumps any longer, and walked forward
in a body.
The captain looked at us and said quietly: “All right, my lads,” and
calmly went on smoking his pipe under the weather cloth.
The mate wanted to go forward and force us to the pumps, but
Captain Saunders said: “Oh, no, let them alone, they will turn to
sharp enough directly.”
The barque carried two of her boats in the davits on the poop, out
of the way of the cargo gear, so the captain told the mate and
second mate to see that there was fresh water and food put in one of
them ready for use.
We had been in the forecastle about an hour, smoking and
grumbling, when a heavy sea broke on board, smashing the lifeboat
and cutter, and washing the cook-house clean over the side. Luckily
for the cook, he was aft in the cabin at the time. A few of the pots
and pans that had been scattered about the deck were picked up.
We were now thoroughly terrified at the amount of water in the ship,
which was causing her to roll heavily to windward, thus exposing her
deck and hatches to the sea, so again we went aft and complained
to the captain that the vessel was sinking, and asked him to run back
to the Bluff.
“I know she is sinking,” he replied coolly, “and I think you had
better pump her out.”
“We want our tea, and we want some rest, it’s nothing else but
pumping since we left Wellington,” replied the men.
“Aye, you want your tea do you? So do I, but the galley’s gone
overboard, and as for the rest—well, I promise you good long rest in
a few hours, if the water is not pumped out. It is six o’clock now,” he
continued, looking at his watch, “and I give her just another two
hours to float upright, after that, you will not need any tea, and you
will get all the rest you want.”
Just then, as though to verify the captain’s words, the vessel gave
a dangerous lurch to the leeward, and in the weather roll the two
lower topsails were blown to bits, leaving the fore, main, and mizzen
staysail only on the vessel. The men, who were holding on to the
mizzen rigging to save themselves from being washed overboard,
looked at the captain, and then at each other, and without a word
made their way to the pumps. The officers and cook joined them,
and they all pumped away for dear life. The barque had a powerful
set of pumps, and after working for four hours, at times up to the
waist in water, they found the soundings were considerably reduced.
In the meantime, Captain Saunders had got some food ready on
the cabin stove, and at midnight they all went into the cabin and had
a good meal and a stiff glass of grog each. Afterwards the watch was
set and there was no more trouble about the work. The men had
found their master, and they worked all the better for the experience.
The following day the gale moderated and the sea went down. The
wreck of the lower topsails was sent down, and fresh sails were bent,
and with all sail set we had a good run over to the Australian coast.
The day before we made the coast the wind hauled into the north,
and was soon blowing a stiff gale, and the leaky old craft had to be
reduced to lower topsails again. The short choppy sea met with on
the Australian coast caused the old barque to leak at an alarming
rate, and the pumps had to be kept continually going to keep her
afloat. It seemed as though the vessel was doomed not to reach
port. To make matters worse, at midnight the gale backed into the
south-west and at the same time the man on the look-out reported
breakers on the lee-bow.
“Loose the upper topsail!” cried the captain. “We must force her off
or under.”
A few men left the pumps and sprang aloft. As soon as they
reached the topsail yard they called out:
“Breakers all along the lee!”
“Shut your mouth, and loose the sails!” replied the captain grimly.
“You’ll know all about the breakers when she strikes.”
“Hoist away,” came from aloft, and the pumps were stopped a few
minutes while the sails were set.
The old barque staggered along under the increased pressure,
and seemed to be heading just along the coast, but fortunately for us
the current setting to the S.S.W. just counteracted the leeway the
ship was making, and when the welcome daylight appeared she just
cleared Port Stevens and squared away for Newcastle.
When the yards were squared and all the danger past, the captain
called all hands aft and congratulated them on having been enabled
to bring the ship safely across under such terrible conditions, and
gave each man a good glass of grog. Then, as we looked at him, to
our astonishment we saw that Captain Saunders could never again
be called “Black Saunders,” for his hair and beard had turned quite
grey during the preceding night, and in his eyes was the look of one
who had touched shoulders with death. Those terrible twelve hours
of anxiety had left a mark that time would never efface.
We arrived in Newcastle that evening and the barque was moored
at Bullock Island Dyke. The following day the crew were paid off.
None of us had any inclination to make another trip in the leaky old
basket. A few days afterwards she was being overhauled for repairs
when a discoloured patch was noticed under the spider band, on the
main mast where the mizzin stay sets up. It was tested with a
sheath-knife and found to be completely rotten. How it had stood the
strain of that last trip was a mystery, for on the mast being
condemned it was found unsafe even to lift it out whole, and it had to
be cut in two for safety, and half of it hoisted out at one time, and a
fine new pitch pine lower mast was put into its place before the
vessel sailed again.
Now Newcastle, New South Wales, in those days was a busy
thriving little seaport. The harbour was full of large sailing vessels,
loading and waiting to load coal. They were bound, principally, for
China, San Francisco, and Pacific coast ports. Very few of these
ships had their full complement of seamen on board, for most of the
sailors had deserted during the ship’s stay in port, and one could not
blame them, when we consider that the pay in these ships from the
British Isles was two pound ten shillings per month, and the poorest
quality of food that it was possible for the ship-owner to buy, and
then only just sufficient to keep body and soul together. The pay out
of the Australian ports was five pound ten shillings for homeward
bound ships, and seven pound per month in the coast and
intercolonial trades, with a sufficiency of good, nourishing food. In
addition to this, there was plenty of work to be found ashore, for the
Queensland, Victorian, and South Australian gold fields were in full
swing. The consequence was there was great difficulty in getting
men for the ships when they were ready for sea.
Like most seaports in those days of sailing ships, the town was full
of sailors’ boarding-houses. Their tactics and methods of procuring
men were not such as could stand the light of day, but, nevertheless,
they did a thriving business.
One of the most noted characters in the town was a boarding-
house keeper, named Dan Slagan a thorough scoundrel to the
backbone. He was notorious for the number of men he had
“shanghaied” out of the port, but, strange to say, he had gained a
certain amount of power in the town, and shipmasters requiring men
were, under the circumstances, compelled to deal with him, although
at the same time many of them had the utmost contempt for the
fellow.
Slagan kept a low-class drinking saloon with a free-and-easy
dancing-room attached to it. The boarders lived in the rooms
overhead. This was the only dancing saloon in the town, and was
thronged with sailors every night. Needless to say that the liquor sold
there was vile stuff, but men who have been living for months on
“salt horse” and weevily biscuit have very little taste left in their
mouths, and, as long as the decoction was hot and came out of a
bottle, it passed muster.
Slagan was an adept at drugging liquor, and he always kept
materials at hand for that purpose. Just a little tobacco ash dropped
in the glass when pouring out the drinks, and the thing was done.
When he required a few sailors for a ship ready to sail, he picked out
the likeliest men in the room—usually strangers—and when the
seamen, hot and thirsty with dancing, ordered drinks through the
women, who acted as waitresses, these Delilahs would bring the
prepared stuff, and very soon the men would feel muddled and
sleepy and would go into the side room and sink down on the
benches. Slagan would then slip in among them:
“Halloa, mates! What’s the matter? Feel queer, eh? Ah, it’s the
dancing and the hot weather. I’ll send you a good tot that will put you
all right.” He would then send one of the girls in with a good glass of
hot whisky, drugged, of course, and that would be all the men would
know for some time. When they came to their senses they found
themselves in a strange ship, out of sight of land, without a stitch of
clothes beyond what they stood up in. Of course, there was generally
a row, but it invariably ended in their turning to work and making the
best of a bad bargain.
One day in February, 18—, it happened that there were three
British ships lying at the buoys, loaded and ready to sail, but each in
need of a few seamen to make up her complement. Not a man could
be got at the shipping office for love or money—the news of a fresh
gold field on the Barrington had reached Newcastle that morning,
and all the disengaged had made tracks for that district, so the only
possible way to get hands for the vessels ready to sail, was to obtain
them from the ships that had lately arrived, and which would have
some time to wait for a loading berth.
The captains of the ships at the buoys sent for Slagan, and
arranged with him to supply them with four men each that night, as
the trio would sail at the turn of the tide. When Slagan got back to
shore he sent some of his runners to quietly let the crews of the
ships in the harbour know there was to be a free concert and dance
at his place, with plenty of whisky into the bargain.
When night came the saloon was packed with seamen, and
among them six fine young American sailors from the ship “Jeremiah
Crawford,” of New Bedford. Now, New Bedford ships are very often
“family ships,” that is to say, the captain, officers, and seamen are
related to each other. Of the six young fellows who went to this
dance, two were nephews of the captain, one was a relative of the
mate, and the others were related to members of the crew.
Long before the dance was over there were several seamen lying
helplessly drugged in the side room. Just before midnight, and while
the dance was still going on, Slagan and his fellow crimps removed
the helpless men down to a boat, and took them off to the ships at
the buoys. Then Slagan pocketed his blood money and before
daylight the vessels were at sea under all plain sail.
The following day, when the six American seamen did not turn up
on board the “Jeremiah Crawford” enquiries were quietly made, and
it was soon found out what had become of them; they had been
among the twelve men “shanghaied” aboard the three waiting ships.
The men’s shipmates, boiling with anger, wanted to go and wreck
Slagan and his saloon, but the captain called all hands aft, and told
them from the poop that they must not let it be known that they knew
where their shipmates were.
“I know how you feel over it,” he said, “and I know how I feel, too,
but I intend to pay that rascal in his own coin. Those Britishers are off
to ’Frisco, and we are bound there, too, and you can bet your bottom
dollar I mean to make the ship move when we start. And what is
more, I intend to take that rascal Slagan with me!”
“All right, captain,” answered the men, “mum’s the word. We will
wait events.”
Two days afterwards Captain Monk, of the “Jeremiah Crawford,”
told Slagan to get him six men by the time the ship was loaded. He
agreed, on condition he was paid three pounds per man. This,
Captain Monk agreed to, and when the ship was finished and hauled
out to the buoys, Slagan sent word to the captain he would bring the
men off about 8 p.m.
 Now, that day, a young Irish police constable had been transferred
from Sydney to Newcastle, and promoted. He was appointed to this
district with a view to watching the goings-on at Slagan’s, rumours of
which had reached police headquarters. The constable was married
to a fine strapping Irish lass, who was a great help to her husband.
She wore her hair short like a man, and was no stranger to the
wearing of men’s clothes. In fact, it was partly owing to her that her
husband had got his position.
The constable knew he was there to get proof of Slagan’s shady
doings, and it was accordingly arranged that his wife should disguise
herself as a seaman, as she had done before, and watch the inside,
while her husband watched the outside of the saloon. The
policeman’s wife was a splendidly built woman, as straight as a reed,
muscular as well, and absolutely fearless. So it happened that when
Slagan was picking out the men he wanted for his purpose that night,
he saw this likely-looking young fellow among them. But he was not
taking any liquor—only a bottle of ginger ale. Slagan very obligingly
opened a bottle for him, and it was a simple matter, as the stuff
fizzled out, to knock the ash from his cigar into the glass with his little
finger, and the mischief was done. Presently one of his spies came in
and cautioned the crimp that there was a constable knocking about
in the street.
“We must get the beggar out of the way, Mike,” said Slagan. “I’ll
soon settle him, you watch him.”
Going outside, he walked up the street past the constable,
smoking a splendid cigar. The constable got a whiff and wished he
had one like it. In a few minutes the crimp returned, still puffing away
at the cigar, as he passed the policeman he quietly dropped his cigar
case. The constable, just behind him, saw the case and picked it up,
and seeing there were two or three fine cigars in it, succumbed to
temptation and put it in his pocket. He could not long resist the mute
appeal of those cigars, so slipping into the shadow behind some
houses, he lit one, and was soon enjoying a good smoke. It had a
wonderfully soothing influence, and he leaned up against the wall,
thinking of the sharp bit of work that had brought him promotion. He
felt that already he had Slagan in his power and he saw himself in
imagination with his sergeant’s stripes. Then all of a sudden he
smiled a sickly smile, his head fell forward, his legs gave way
beneath him, and he sank in a heap on the ground. A few minutes
afterwards the spy, who had been watching him all the time,
cautiously approached. He took the cigar case out of the
unconscious man’s tunic, removed the remains of the drugged cigar
from his mouth, and left him there.
The night was very dark, and about 8 p.m., while the dancing and
singing were still in full swing, Slagan and his tools got the selected
men off in a boat. The tug was ahead of the ship, all ready to start;
when the crimp got alongside with his men the “Jeremiah Crawford”
was hanging to a slip rope, and the captain was in his cabin waiting
for Slagan and the sailors.
“Hurry up and get those chaps on board,” the mate called out, “I
want to get under way.”
“All right, Mister Mate,” answered one of the crimps, “we’ll soon
have them on board. Get out of that you brutes!” he added, giving
one of the dazed men a savage lack.
Slogan and his men soon got their victims on board, but on getting
on deck one of the fellows, a fine-built young Swede, seemed to
partly recover his senses.
“I don’t belong to this ship,”’ he said, and made for the gangway.
With an oath Slagan sprang at him. A terrific blow on the side of the
head, and the poor fellow dropped senseless on the deck. They then
bundled the lot forward.
Finding no light in the forecastle he and his men stepped inside,
and were in the act of striking matches, when each of them was
knocked senseless with a blow behind the ear from a knuckle duster.
They were then dropped into the fore-peak and the hatches fastened
down, while the new men were lifted into berths to sleep off the
effects of the drugged liquor.
In the meantime the second mate slipped down the gangway, and
standing on one side of Slagan’s boat, capsized her. When she filled
with water he cast her off and let her drift up river.
The tug boat dropped down, the tow-rope was secured, the buoy
cast off, and before midnight the ship was outside the Nobbies and
under all sail. At day light the “shanghaied” men were getting over
the effects of the drug and the captain called all hands aft and gave
them a good stiff glass of grog. The new men were in a terrible state
when they came to their senses and found they had been
“shanghaied.” One young fellow in particular sat down on the hatch,
and placing his head on his hands, seemed to give way to despair.
He took no heed of what was going on, and spoke no word to
anyone. The young Swede, who had been so brutally struck by
Sullivan stepped up to the captain:
“Who brought us on board?” he asked.
“Dan Slagan,” replied the mate, “he said you were his boarders. I
saw him come alongside, and then I went forward, and have not
seen him since.”
“Did you pay him any advance for us, captain?”
“No, I have not seen him,” said the skipper. “He must have gone
on shore again. I cannot understand it. I do not know the man,” he
added. “I wrote him to get me six men, and told him I would sign
them on board. I heard him come alongside with you, but when I
came out of the cabin I saw no boat alongside, and we got under
weigh at once.”
“Thank you, captain,” said the Swede, “Slagan and I will meet
again some day.”
“Halloa, halloa, there! What’s all this row about?” sang out from the
forecastle accompanied by a heavy thumping.
The mate started to ran forward, and all hands turned to behold a
remarkable sight.
Out of the forecastle bolted three men. Casting their eyes in the
direction of the land, they rushed aft, passed the seamen, and were
about to mount the poop-ladder, when the mate barred the way.
“Get down out of this, you skunks!” he roared, “who are you
fellows, and where do you come from?”
“You know jolly well who I am,” roared the biggest of the three,
“and you had better land us as quick as you can, or it will be a bad
job for you, so I tell you.”
The mate looked at him in silence for a moment, then the skipper
chimed in.
 “Who the deuce are you?” demanded Captain Monk, “and what
are you doing aboard my ship?”
“What are you trying to get at, captain?” cried the crimp furiously.
“You know very well who I am; I’m Dan Slagan. I brought you six
men last night, and when we took them into the forecastle——”
There was a shuffle among the men, and the next minute the
young Swede had sprung at the crimps throat and the two were
tossing about the deck battering each other like wild beasts.
“Stand back everybody!” cried the mate. “Let them have it out.”
Slagan was the bigger and heavier man, but the Swede was a
perfect young athlete, and had a cruel wrong to wipe out. The
muscles of his arms and neck stood out like strong cords as the two
rolled from side to side.
Not a word was uttered by the officers or crew, who stood calmly
looking on. Suddenly, by a quick movement, the Swede pinned
Slagan against the fife-rail around the mainmast, and with his right
hand battered his face unmercifully. Then seizing him by the throat,
he flung him into the lee-scupper, where he lay without movement.
The Swede looked at his foe for a moment, then coolly walked over
and wiped his feet on him. Next, turning to the poop where Captain
Monk and the officers stood, he touched his cap and said:
“I am second mate of the Swedish ship ‘Oscar Branch,’ and my
father is the captain. I went on shore for a walk, and hearing the
music I went into the saloon for a drink. I sat down to watch the
dancers, and knew no more until I found myself on board this ship.
What will my father think? What will my employers say?” He stopped
abruptly, and walked forward with his head bent, overwhelmed with
shame and grief.
Within another minute the two remaining crimps were hotly
engaged with two of the ship’s crew, whose relatives had been
“shanghaied” aboard the Britishers. The sailors made short work of
the crimps, and fairly wiped the deck with them. Captain Monk then
ordered the hapless three to be locked up in separate cabins and fed
on bread and water for a few days.
“It will give them time to repent,” he said to the mate. “It won’t do to
put them with the crew yet awhile—there would be murder done. In a
few days they can go forward, and the crew will save us dirtying our
hands with them, the scoundrels. Our chaps will lead them a dance,
and they’ll wish to heaven they had never laid hands on my crew.”
Just then the mate noticed the young fellow sitting on the hatch with
his head in his hands. He seemed utterly dejected and oblivious of
everything about him. The rest of the men had gone forward, and
were excitedly discussing the matter of Slagan and his mates being
on board, each of them swearing to have his pound of flesh out of
the hated “shanghaiers.” The captain and mate walked along to the
young fellow on the hatch. Putting his hand kindly on the bowed
head, Captain Monk said: “Come, come, young man, you must not
give way like this. Sailors should always make the best of
everything.”
Lifting his head at the kindly touch and words, the young fellow
replied:
“Oh, captain, whatever shall I do? I am not a sailor.”
“Oh, never mind that, you’ll soon learn here, so go forward with the
others.”
“Oh, captain, take pity on me!” cried the supposed young seaman,
tremulously. “For heaven’s sake take pity on me, I am a respectable
married woman! My husband is Police Constable Hogan of the
Newcastle Police.”
The captain and mate were astounded, and for a moment could do
nothing but stare at her. Then, seeing some of the men forward
looking at them, Captain Monk said: “Come aft to the saloon and I
will hear your story.”
When they got into the cabin Mrs. Hogan told how the authorities
at Sydney had heard something of the doings of Slagan and his
crimps, and had sent her husband to the district to get evidence
against him. She had assisted her husband before, and on this
occasion had dressed up in her present clothes and joined the
sailors in the dancing room to watch Slagan and his satellites.
“I called for a bottle of ginger ale,” she added. “I watched him open
the bottle and I am sure there was nothing in the glass, for I saw it
standing upside down on the counter, but I had not drunk it many
minutes before I felt my head getting light, and I remembered no
more until I found myself on board this ship. I have abundant
evidence against that blackguard now, but it is no good, as he is on
board here. What shall I do? I have no clothes but these. I cannot go
among those men.”
“Steamer ahead, sir! Coming this way,” rang out the cry.
“Aye, aye!”
Captain Monk took a look at her through the telescope.
“Run up the ‘Urgent’ signal at once!” he shouted. “It’s the Union
Company’s boat bound to Melbourne. I will send a letter and this
woman on board. Back the mainyard, and get the boat out quick.”
Up went the signal, and the steamer bore down towards the ship.
Her decks were crowded with passengers.
“You will go in the boat, Mrs. Hogan,” said the skipper, “and you
had better explain things to the captain at once. My letter will tell him
also. Mr. Potter, you go with the boat, and take four of our hands with
you. As soon as you give the letter to the captain, put this woman on
board and return at once.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Ship your oars! Let go forward.”
The boat shot away and was soon alongside the steamer, and the
mate and Mrs. Hogan climbed on board. Going along to the bridge,
Mr. Potter handed the letter to the captain, who read it and said:
“All right. Tell Captain Monk that I will take the woman to
Melbourne. I am glad he has that blackguard on board. Good-bye.”
The mate got back into his boat, the engines were rung ahead, the
ensign was dipped three times and before the boat was on board
again, the steamer was out of sight.
Then the sails were filled once more and the “Jeremiah Crawford”
stood on her course.
Five days afterwards Slagan and his mates were released and
sent to live in the forecastle. Slagan was put into the mate’s watch,
and the two crimps in the second mate’s watch.
There was another row at once, and again the blackguards got a
good thrashing, they were put to the most menial work, were made
to wait on the others, and do all the dirty work about the deck, in fact
their lives were made a misery to them from morning to night. Hardly
a day passed that one or other of the scoundrels did not get a licking.
They had a taste of the misery they had caused many another man,
and the captain said they had time to repent of their misdeeds.
When the “Jeremiah Crawford” arrived at San Francisco the pilot
informed them that two British ships had just gone to anchorage,
adding that he noticed they were from Newcastle. This was good
news to all but Slagan and his crimps. As they moved up the harbour
to their anchorage they passed close to the “Commonwealth.” On
board were some of the “Jeremiah Crawford’s” crew, and as they
passed one of the sailors called out: “We have Slagan on board.”
After the sails were unbent, all the running gear triced up, and the
decks washed down the crew were dismissed.
“Pay off to-morrow,” said the mate.
“Aye, aye!” answered the crew.
All hands went on shore, and Slagan was forced, much against his
will, to go with them. On the wharf where they landed stood the six
American sailors, whom he and his men had “shanghaied” from
Newcastle. Let us mercifully draw a veil over the crimps’ punishment.
None of the three blackguards turned up when the crew were paid
off, no questions were asked, and no explanations given, but two
years afterwards Slagan appeared again in Newcastle, New South
Wales—not the unscrupulous bully and braggart, but a broken,
decrepit, feeble old man.
 CHAPTER XXIV

Off to the Palmer Goldfields

After my experience on the barque “Edinburgh” I felt that I was

entitled to a spell on shore, and, as my landlady’s daughter had
responded to the attentions I showered upon her, I had a most
enjoyable time as long as my money lasted, then my restless spirit
began to assert itself again and to long for pastures new, and the
farthest thought in my head was to settle down. I was debating in my
mind whether to start up country or join a vessel going to a port that I
had not yet been to, when news reached Newcastle of a rush to the
Palmer goldfields. This news put the whole place in a ferment.
Hundreds of men in Newcastle alone threw up their employment,
and started for the north, whenever there was a chance of getting
along the coast. Ships in the harbour were deserted by their crews,
even the officers in many instances deserting at the same time. It
would have been quite an easy matter to get a berth on a ship, but
that I, too, had an attack of gold fever, and determined that I would
get to the Palmer and try my luck. But that was easier said than
done, for the Palmer goldfields lay somewhere in, as yet, an
unexplored country, which it was quite impossible to reach after the
commencement of the wet season. Many attempts had been made,
all more or less unsuccessful, and all were loud in proclaiming the
impossibilities to be met with on the road, such as swollen rivers,
marshes, swamps, mountains, blacks, and besides these, provisions
had not only to be taken for the journey, but there were none to be
obtained on the goldfields, so these had to be carried, or else you
would have to starve. Many people went to Sydney, and from thence
to Brisbane, and then tramped the rest of the way, many lost their
lives in the attempt, some were killed by the blacks, some got
drowned in crossing the rushing swollen rivers, many died of hunger
and thirst crossing the waterless tracks beneath the terrible fiery sun
that shone down so pitilessly from a cloudless sky, for in that arid
track there was no shelter, no shadow of a great rock, no trees to
give a moment’s respite to the travellers in that weary land.
The nearest port to the Palmer was the newly opened port of
Cookstown, at the mouth of the Endeavour River, and the spot is
identical with a place mentioned in Captain Cook’s travels, where he
ran his ship, the “Endeavour,” ashore to carry out some very
necessary repairs to that vessel, hence the names Cookstown and
Endeavour River, it was about twelve hundred miles from Newcastle.
That there were already thousands of people flocking there from all
parts of the world, New Zealand, California, England, India and
China, did not deter me in the least, rather the reverse.
There was a great difficulty in getting a berth in a north bound
vessel, but several of the shipowners in Newcastle put a vessel on
the berth for passengers and stores to Townsville, but would not
send their vessels to Cookstown, for the place was not well known,
and there was a great risk of losing a ship, and as these vessels
were uninsurable, they did not care to take the risk. Townsville was
about two hundred and forty miles from Cooktown, and I think about
the same distance from the new diggings, the difficulties of the
overland route to Townsville were almost insurmountable, unless
provided with a good stock of horses, a good bush cart, and at least
six months stock of provisions, and as many of the gold seekers did
not carry much extra equipment, they all made for Cookstown.
Several vessels had got away full up with passengers, whom the
shipowners charged thirty pounds passage money per man, and the
same for each horse, the passengers finding their own provender
and the ship finding fresh water. Of course, there were hundreds of
persons who wished to go, but could not afford that price, I among
the number, so I determined to try and get a berth as seaman on one
of these vessels, but was unsuccessful.
However, one day, while talking the matter over with several
friends, I suggested that a number of us should form ourselves into a
company, each paying down so much, and purchase one of the
many Ketches sailing up and down between the Hunter and Manning
Rivers, and which were to be had for an old song almost, for they
would scarcely float. My suggestion was laughed at by most of those
present, but one man asked if I would risk my life in one of these
ketches all the way to Townsville. I replied that I would willingly work
one of them along the coast, but I had only ten pounds to my name.
Then the matter dropped for that day.
Three days afterwards one of the coasting captains, named Alec
Brown, came to me and asked if I would help him work the
“Woolara,” a small schooner of fifty tons, to Cookstown. He offered
me twenty pounds for the run, and a share of the profits if I cared to
return with him. He was quite candid with me, and said the “Woolara”
was not a new vessel, but had been laid up at Waratah on the mud
for a couple of years, and would leak like a basket if we got any bad
weather, but he thought we might nurse her, and make a good thing
out of her if we got to Cookstown all right. I was quite willing, and
closed with him at once in consideration of his paying me the twenty
pounds in advance to enable me to get a few things I wanted. He
agreed to this, and the following day we both went up to Waratah,
and got the old craft afloat. We found, as you may think, a few leaky
places in her sides, and the captain got three men to caulk her well,
and then we gave her three good coats of boiling pitch all over. After
a week’s work on her we made her as tight as a bottle, and she
looked quite a smart little craft when cleaned up and painted a bit.
She had a suit of sails that were like a patchwork quilt, but Captain
Brown bought another second-hand suit of sails from one of the
schooners that traded to Lake Macquarry for timber. A quantity of
stone ballast was laid level in the hold, and, if I remember right, we
had fifty casks of water stowed securely on the top of the ballast.
After all was shipshape she was advertised to sail for Cookstown,
and so great was the craving to get to the goldfields that we had on
the first day over fifty applications for passages. The passage money
was £35 down, and ship fare only supplied. I think if they had only
been offered bread and water we could have filled the vessel with
them, to such an extent was the gold fever affecting the place. When
the captain found he could get sufficient passengers, the ballast in
the hold was boarded over and temporary berths put up. We
arranged to take twenty passengers, each man signing articles as
seamen at one shilling per month.
We left Newcastle at night, a beautiful cloudless night, singing and
making merry, just as though we were on a pleasure trip, for most of
the passengers had been seamen at some time or other and were a
right down jolly lot of men. They looked after themselves, and also
gave us all the help we required. We had a fine passage right up to
Brisbane, but here our luck as regards the weather forsook us, for
just after passing Brisbane we got into a black north-easter, and for a
few hours it was nearly a case with us, so dangerous was our
condition, but we managed to crawl into Hervey Bay until the breeze
had blown itself out.
After eight hours detention we again started on our journey and
reached Port Denison. Here we encountered a terrific gale that very
nearly finished our sailing. The little craft was a splendid sea-boat,
and that helped us to nurse her through the angry waters. But we
had our work cut out. At times the schooner would be standing
almost on one end, and the next moment she would be on the other.
Then she would be thrown from side to side like a shuttlecock. Soon
she began to leak freely, and no wonder, but we had plenty of willing
help, although a number of the men had caved in and were lying
helpless in the hold, battened down, the only ventilation they could
have being that which passed through the cabin, for though many of
them had been sailors, they had sailed in larger vessels, and our
little craft was being tossed about so violently in the gale that they
were laid low with sea-sickness. But there was no complaint from
any of them. The thought of the bright yellow gold that lay in the
earth on the Palmer, waiting for them to come and gather it, cheered
them up, for each man thought in his heart that he was sure to make
his fortune.
After a terrible experience we managed to creep in behind Cape
Upstart, about one hundred miles from Townsville. Here we lay
twenty-four hours to put things a bit shipshape again, and recover
from our knocking about. The captain offered to put any of the
passengers ashore at Townsville, if they chose, but one and all
decided to continue the voyage to Cookstown, and each one