On meeting
former watersider Jack Meaney at the Adelaide River Show in the Top End , Frank Hardy
said he needed
somewhere quiet to write his book
about the Gurindji struggle , The Unlucky Australians. Meaney took him
home to Milton Springs, the place where
the Stayput Malays had been hidden . Young John
Meaney remembered the author pounding
out the book on a typewriter , puffing away on his pipe
filled with Plum tobacco .
In that book Hardy paid
tribute to the part played
by Bowditch in the struggle . He described Bowditch as the
most colourful character in a city where there were no
human beings , only characters. His friend Jim Bowditch, he said , was the last of the fighting
editors.
ASIO took an
interest in the book before it was published. A l968 ASIO report stated Hardy
had been in Darwin on
26/12/67 and had gone to
Wave Hill . The reason for the
visit, it stated, was for Hardy to put
the “ finishing touches” to his book,The Unlucky Australians. It continued-
Hardy
has shown proofs of the book to everyone
who is mentioned in it . The
book should have been published in
August but has been held up because the
publishers are very worried about libel
actions. Jim (James Frederick) Bowditch
, who is a friend of Hardy’s , has read
the proofs and thinks that this book may not be published , because
of the numerous libellous statements .
In a
move to
ease the Wattie Creek situation, which
was embarrassing the government
and Vesteys, the government
in July l968 said it would build a township on Crown land
at the Wave Hill centre in an attempt to meet the needs of
the Gurindji and other
Aboriginals in the district. Most
of the strikers remained at
Daguragu despite the lack of facilities. Vesteys
gave the government an undertaking that
the Aboriginals at Daguragu would
not be disturbed.
The
Gurindji then began fencing and
building on the land . Support
flowed in from many
sources. Brian Manning said the watersiders of Australia donated
$17,000 through a levy , the money to be used by the Gurindji for fencing.
Manning, who had a 16mm Bolex movie camera, went to Wave Hill with Cec Holmes
who made a film of the fences being erected.
Hardy
staged a demonstration outside Vesteys
headquarters in Britain and arranged for a
TV team to come to Australia .About l970, a Darwin activist, agronomist
Robert Wesley-Smith , met
Bowditch and came under his
influence. Bowditch invited Wesley-Smith to drop into the office
at the end of the day for a drink
and a talk with
him and other staff members. Commonly
called Wes , he
did not drink at the time, but
enjoyed the discussions .
Bowditch provided support
for Wesley- -Smith’s campaigns and gave him editorial backing on various
issues . Wes and his then wife ,
Jan, both became involved with the
Gurindji after reading Hardy’s book . ASIO even checked
to see that Wesley-Smith
was absent from Darwin
in Adelaide for two weeks to
be married.
Wesley-Smith and George and
Moira Gibbs were in a group which
formed the Murramulla-
Gurindji Cattle Company which after
three months was passed over to the control of the Gurindji.The
Gibbs were another example of activists
mindlessly condemned by some for
their involvement in union work
and other issues ,closely
watched by ASIO.
Some of the offspring of
Darwin activists interviewed in connection with this biography said they had
often suffered at school - “ copped
it ” being one expression- due to their
parents’ activities.
It was not
only unionists who were subjected to mindless scorn . Kim Lockwood
related an episode
at school in Darwin , aged about
10 , when a pupil came up and told him ,
“ Your dad is a communist .” Not knowing what a
communist was, Kim went
home and
told his father , who reacted
angrily . He told Kim
to inform the
boy that if he ever repeated that statement he would
knock his block off.
When George Gibbs died in
l969, Cec Holmes delivered the
eulogy at the funeral service and
his wife, Sandra, performed an electrifying rendition
of the stirring union song the Ballad
of Joe Hill . There was an editorial in the NT News paying tribute to Gibbs headed
DEATH OF A BATTLER.
The
Communist newspaper Tribune
said Gibbs had been involved in the movement for Aboriginal rights since the l950s and in
recent times had been closely
associated with the struggle of the
Gurindji people at Wattie Creek. He had come to the NT in the l930s and had been a founder member of
the Workers’ Club . Mrs Gibbs
came from a family of union activists, and she had been involved in the
Peace Council with Esther Meaney .
As
secretary of the waterside section of
the NAWU, Brian Manning , inaugurated a
$100 annual educational
bursary to be awarded to an
Aboriginal student as a memorial to George
Gibbs’s dedication to the
Aboriginal cause. There being no
applicants, the money each year was put
towards establishment of the George
Gibbs Memorial Collection
at the Mitchell Library , Sydney
, the repository of all the NT
Council for Aboriginal Rights material ,
his diaries and union memorabilia from the early days . Mrs
Gibbs died of cancer in Sydney .
The
Gurindji would come to Darwin and at
times “ a whole mob ” travelling
on the Wattie Creek truck would go
to the NT News and talk with
Bowditch . One of them , Mick Rangiari , was known as “ Hoppy Mick ” because his
pelvis was broken in a fall from a
frightened horse. After the accident
he had
spent several painful weeks lying on a
verandah without medical
treatment.
Rangiari drove
a battered vehicle
to Darwin and asked Bowditch to help the Gurindji. There is a suggestion that on that occasion Bowditch
bought a complete set of new
tyres for Rangiari as the ones on the
truck were badly worn.
In the long drawn out campaign
for the Gurindji , Frank Hardy and Paddy Carroll
of the NAWU had a falling out ; Bowditch arranged a reconciliation . At a packed
performance in Darwin by American country and
western singer , Johnny Cash , Sandra
Holmes sang the protest song Gurindji
Blues written by Ted Egan ,who later became the Administrator of
the Northern Territory , from the floor
of the
Penthouse .
Under the heading
ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY , ASIO's NT
regional director on March
30 l971 sent headquarters a
confidential report about the involvement of NAWU Aboriginal organiser
Dexter Daniels in relation to fund raising activities on behalf of the Roper River
Land Rights Fund . He wrote that Roper River was not readily accessible from Darwin and it was necessary for ASIO to rely on , blacked out ,
to obtain information
on the activities of
persons of security interest in this area.
Later in
the year ASIO stated NT News employees
“taking the Tribune” included Bowditch
and journalists Peter Cooke, John
Loizou and John Meeking
, the political roundsman . Cooke was
described as being far left in
his views , but as yet, unwilling to join an “old left” political group , such
as the C.P.A.
In l972
Lord Vestey wrote to Prime Minister Billy
McMahon offering to
surrender some areas of the Vestey lease
to Aborigines. An area of 35
square miles of Wave Hill was
given over , enabling the Wave Hill
centre and Daguragu to be linked
by vacant Crown land . NEXT :Pressure on Bowditch and another manhunt .
