Broulee Literary Circles Buzzing

By John Hicks

Broulee literary circles were buzzing on Sunday afternoon when award winning writer Madelaine Dickie launched her second novel Red Can Origami at the home of colourful local identities Marie Zuvich and husband Bill Nagle (aka Madelaine’s parents in law).   It was standing room only An easy way to get a standing ovation according to Madelaine.  

Maybe so but she deserved it.  She spoke passionately of life in the Kimberley and the issues explored in her book. 

Red Can Origami shadows a young reporter working in a tiny northern Australia town where she walks into a battle between a Japanese mining company and an Aboriginal community divided about a mining proposal.  Barramundi fishing and beer guzzling get a mention.  It was written on Balangarra country in the Kimberley and at Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo.

Madelaine spoke of her anxiety of writing as a non-Aboriginal about Aboriginal matters. But issues like caring for country, climate change and mining affect us all and there’s space for different voices.  She agreed with author Steve Hawke that The important thing is to write with great respect, write well and with a good heart.  

Behind every successful writer is a partner with a job and Madelaine paid tribute to her husband and surf mate Tom Nagle.

So far the novel has been warmly received by Broulee reviewers. I like the book said mother-in-law Marie and father-in-law Bill intends to like the book when he reads it.  Mossy Point’s Mel White liked the cover and was quite willing to judge the book by it.

Madelaine’s first novel Troppo won the City of Fremantle TAG Hungerford Award and was shortlisted for two other awards.   She currently lives in Exmouth WA except when she doesn’t. With the help of two recent grants, she has been writing her third novel at an arts residency at Arquetopia in Mexico.  She’s also working on a biography of Wayne Bergmann, an Aboriginal Nyikina man, and former CEO of the Kimberley Land Council, one of the most powerful in Australia.

Red Can Origami (Fremantle Press) can be purchased from local bookshops.  

From the Hungerford award to an epic new novel, Madelaine Dickie chats to Holden Sheppard about writing, the Kimberley and Indigenous affairs on the Fremantle Press podcast

By Fremantle Press

Madelaine Dickie’s gripping new novel Red Can Origami explores the tensions between a Japanese uranium mining company and a Native Title group in regional Western Australia.

In this episode of the Fremantle Press podcast, she explains how the Kimberley people and landscape inspired the story, why she chose to write it in the second person and the origin of the semi-dangerous game Swagmo.

LISTEN HERE

Music: ‘Letter to a Daughter of St George’, from the Meat Lunch EP: Songs from Floaters. Written by Alan Fyfe. Performed by Trevor Bentley (guitar and vocals – @trevormb) and Chris Parkinson (harmonica). Produced by Blake Carnaby of Nuglife studios with impresario work by Benjamin P. Newton.

Podcast editor: Claire Miller

Mastered by: Aidan d’Adhema

Biography of Kimberley leader Wayne Bergmann gets a leg-up from the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund

Photo by Charlotte Dickie. @charbllavita.

By Fremantle Press.

Madelaine Dickie will be one of 11 authors to represent Australian literature on five different continents thanks to Writers Victoria and the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund. While many recipients will head overseas, Madelaine will use the money to research her proposed manuscript ‘Gas Days or the Cost of Doing Good: A Biography of Wayne Bergmann’ in Broome.

Judged by writer Eugen Bacon, publisher Kirstie Innes-Will from Black Inc., and podcaster Astrid Edwards, the competitive round received close to 100 applications.

Dickie said the support for Bergmann and his story was heartening. ‘Wayne is a proud Nyikina man who has worked tirelessly towards independent Aboriginal economic development. He has pursued a positive agenda for Kimberley Aboriginal people through his roles as CEO of KRED Enterprises and formerly as CEO of the Kimberley Land Council, and it was no surprise last year to see him become a finalist in the Western Australian of the Year Awards.’

Dickie said she and Wayne are keen to get started. ‘It was a privilege to be asked by Wayne to write this biography with him. The Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant means we can work together in Broome to bring an important story to life for readers around Australia.’

Wayne Bergmann is recognised as one of Australia’s leading advocates for Indigenous self-determination through economic empowerment and opportunity. A proud Nyikina man, boilermaker-welder and lawyer, Bergmann has served as Executive Director of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC), CEO of the Kimberley Land Council (KLC), Chair of Walalakoo Aboriginal Corporation, Chair of the Expert Indigenous Working Group for the COAG Investigation into Indigenous Land Administration and Use, and is currently the CEO of KRED Enterprises, an Aboriginal charitable foundation.

Madelaine Dickie is a young author based in regional WA whose first novel, Troppo, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Dobbie Literary Award, and won the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award. Her second novel, Red Can Origami, is available to now from all good bookstores and online.

Other successful recipients in Round 5 of the travel fund were Evelyn Araluen, Jonathan Dunk, Fiona Hardy, Cate Kennedy, Tamara Lazaroff, Ruhi Lee, Robert Lukins, Mirandi Riwoe, Sara Saleh and Maria Takolander. In partnership with the Myer Foundation, the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund opened in 2017 to support emerging, midcareer and established Australian writers and literary sector workers.

More information is available on the Writers Victoria website.

The broken man who battled the State—and won

First published in National Indigenous Times on July 23, 2019

Dr Antonio Buti is a member of the Western Australian Parliament, Honorary Fellow at the Law School at the University of Western Australia and Adjunct Professor at the Law School of Murdoch University.

By Madelaine Dickie

Please note, this story contains the name of a person who has passed away. 

During Christmas-time in 1957 an Aboriginal baby boy falls sick.

The anxious father—carrying the baby in his arms—searches for someone with a vehicle.

He finds neighbours who are willing to drive his son Bruce two hours to Adelaide Children’s Hospital.

A couple of weeks after admission, no longer sick, baby Bruce is fostered to a non-Indigenous couple. There’s no paperwork. No questions asked. No consent from Bruce’s parents. Staff tell the couple the baby has been abandoned, neglected.

Bruce will never see his father again.

So starts A Stolen Life, The Bruce Trevorrow Case, a distressing story about the only member of the Stolen Generations to sue an Australian government for compensation and win.

It was written by Antonio Buti, a lawyer who prepared Stolen Generations submissions for the national inquiry that resulted in the Bringing The Home report and the current WA Labor MP for Armadale.

Bruce’s story first caught Mr Buti’s attention when it made headlines in 2007.

“Initially I wrote an article for a legal journal. Then I realised that the story needed a wider audience,” Mr Buti said.

A move from legal academia to politics meant time was scarce, and all up, the book took Mr Buti nearly ten years.

“The story was always burning, and the desire was to complete it. Living in Western Australia, with the case occurring in South Australia, there were long periods of hiatus. But I had an obligation to the people I interviewed, including Bruce’s wife and siblings, and I wanted to honour his legacy and their fight for justice.”

Gently, and with great care, Mr Buti describes the violation of the fundamental rights of a 13-month-old baby, the devastation of public service malpractice, and government departments that move swiftly with zeal, but not compassion.

He articulates the profound effects the removal had on Bruce both as a child and an adult—the sickness, depression, anxiety, insecurity and alcohol dependence.

Bruce is a man who doesn’t belong to the white family who grew him up, or to the Aboriginal family from whom he was stolen.

He is a man who has endured many false dawns.

A Stolen Life moves from harrowing personal history to high drama in the courtroom.

In 1993, Bruce learns he may be able to sue the government for taking him away from his family. He contacts the native title unit of South Australia’s Aboriginal legal service where he meets Tim Wooley. Bruce speaks to Wooley in a voice so soft Wooley must lean forward to hear.

 ‘I think they should compensate me; they should give me money for what they have done to me. They took me from my family, and from my people, the Ngarrindjeri people.’
Wooley stares at the sad, broken man in front of him. He is silent, wondering how to answer.
Bruce staggers into the silence, shattering it. ‘What they did was wrong. Can you help me find out more about what they did to me? Can I sue them?’

Wooley refers Bruce to Joanna Richardson, manager of the civil unit at the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement on King Street in Adelaide. It’s to be an auspicious meeting. Five years later, Richardson will tell Bruce that there’s enough evidence to sue the State on his behalf. Her lead counsel will be the highly credentialed Julian Burnside QC.

By the time Bruce Trevorrow gets his day in court as part of a gruelling 38-day trial, he’s on heart tablets, Panadeine Forte, Valium and antidepressants.

Mr Buti said when Bruce stepped into the witness box, it was without falsity or artifice.

“The fact that he sat in the witness box was very compelling. He was a broken man. Even the judge said the same thing …”

In less capable hands, we might find ourselves stranded in a jungle of legalese. But Mr Buti has a gift for cutting down complex issues into straightforward terms. The trial never loses its quick and gripping tempo, or its hum of tension, despite the fact that we know the outcome.

In court, there’s a need for a narrative, for a well-told story, and Mr Buti delivers, right up to Justice Gray’s judgement.

The Justice found that Bruce was dealt with by the State without lawful authority in a manner that affected his personal wellbeing and freedom, that he was falsely imprisoned, and that he was the subject of breaches of the common law duty of care owed by the State. He ruled that the State must compensate Bruce for damages.

“Justice Gray’s judgement was beautifully written, very poetic, but logical. It was a very human reading of the law, a proper reading of the law, and Justice Gray read the law as it should be read,” Mr Buti said.

Later, Bruce will contact the lead counsel on his case, Julien Burnside QC, and ask him to write to Justice Gray on his behalf.

‘[Bruce] wants him [the Justice] to know how much he appreciates the respect with which His Honour has treated him as a witness and as an Indigenous person. Throughout his damaged life, Bruce too often has presented as unlikeable and as emotionally detached from family and from those who would try to be his friend. Clearly though, at his core, those innate human values exist, and Justice Gray has reached them with this act of thoughtfulness in the midst of a trial that must operate according to procedure shaped by soulless bureaucracy.’

Was it worth it, for Bruce?

Mr Buti said it was.

“It was definitely worth it. He felt vindicated. He felt like finally someone had listened. It was a judicial acknowledgement of the abandonment and damage he felt,” Mr Buti said.

The case’s precedent value remains unclear, but it has been a catalyst for a reparations scheme in South Australia which allows claimants to seek compensation without enduring a long and expensive court process.

A Stolen Life should be read by students of law, or anyone interested in studying law; by every public servant working in areas of policy that affect First Nations people; by anyone with an interest in Australian history; by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike.

It is a devastating and important part of our truth-telling as a nation.

A Stolen Life was published by Fremantle Press this month and will be launched in Adelaide on August 12th.

Wiradjuri author’s second novel hypnotically lyrical

First published in National Indigenous Times on July 17, 2019

By Madelaine Dickie

Tara June Winch’s second novel The Yield unrolls on the plains of Wiradjuri country in NSW, where the ‘possibility of rain was a simple smell, a good taste’ and ‘the sun slapped the barren earth with an open palm’.

Ms Winch said that to a stranger’s eye, Wiradjuri country might at first seem nondescript.

But first impressions can be deceptive.

“It’s farming country, there are granite boulders, the Murray Darling and its tributaries … It’s beautiful country, that was really impacted by colonisation,” Ms Winch said.

Three narrators take us by the hand and guide us gently through the fall-out of this colonisation. They draw us into a story where guilt lies ‘thick and wet and as black and dirty as diesel’ and where there’s a constant, slow-burn of anguish.

The first narrator is Albert (Poppy) Goondiwindi. Modelled on Winch’s own father and grandfather, Poppy has just passed away, leaving a dictionary of words in the Wiradjuri language—words for bad spirits, the magic tree, wattle flowers, and a bird that always brings darkness, the yurung, or grey shrike thrush. Stories grow around these words, a history personal and political, full of wisdom for the younger generations, a testament to a lasting cultural connection to country.

Albert’s granddaughter August is another of the narrators. London-based, her days start with a tumbler of aspirin and a coffee, her nights involve scrubbing plates clean of gravy. The passing of her grandfather pulls her back home to the fictional town of Massacre Plains. August describes it at times as ‘the saddest place on earth’ and it’s through August’s eyes that we learn of another tragedy. Her family are about to be evacuated from their property to make way for a giant tin mine. The mine, which threatens to be a huge hole gouged out of country, mirrors a hole, an emptiness in the characters.

The third narrator, a complex and ambiguous villain, is the Reverend Ferdinand B Greenleaf, who ran the Prosperous Lutheran Mission for the local community from 1880. The Reverend documents a turbulent series of events at the mission and his actions prompt us to consider whether or not he was at heart a kind man, or whether he came from ‘a long pattern of bad’.

The Yield is sweeping in scope—while all action and history relates back to just 500 acres of land, Ms Winch deftly introduces the Freedom Ride, dog tags, massacres, mining, farming, sexual abuse, native title, the Stolen Generations, culture, and language. The Wiradjuri language, saved from extinction by people such as Stan Grant Snr and John Rudder, is at the very heart of The Yield.

Ms Winch hopes to see a revival of Indigenous languages across Australia.

“Instead of kids learning French, or Mandarin, imagine if you were teaching Indigenous languages starting at two, three, four years old? Through learning language, stories and songs, children’s perception of identity would be completely different.”

“Language gives an access point to empathy, understanding and respect. While it’s not the work of a novelist to push for this, there needs to be a good ground swell of people behind it. Language teaching also creates a viable economy—creates jobs for teachers and trainers as well.”

Ms Winch said she looks forward to more bilingual publications in Indigenous languages and that she’s excited by the potential in the next crop of First Nations authors. She has urged young up-and-coming writers to have confidence in their own voices and stories.

“Don’t be scared, because we need your stories, we need your perspectives. Enter heaps of competitions and keep pushing through rejections. Read our old stories and look at our history and the path that’s been paved before us.”

“Our stories are so important. We are the original storytellers. And people are starting to recognise this.”

While the The Yield is a story swollen with grief—so sad, in fact, that not even Ms Winch can re-read it without weeping—the novel’s bookended with notes of hope in the words wanga-dyung and giyal-dhuray.

Wanga-dyung means lost, but not lost always.

Giyal-dhuray means ashamed, to have shame. In the closing chapter of the book, Poppy writes: I’m done with this word. I’d leave it out completely but I can’t. It’s become part of the dictionary we think we should carry. We mustn’t anymore. See, pain travels through our family tree like a songline. We’ve been singing our pain into a solid thing. The old ones, the young ones too, are ready to heal. We don’t have to be giyal-dhuray anymore, we don’t have to pass that down anymore. 

Upon publication of the novel, Ms Winch ensured elders were given copies of the book and that a percentage of the book’s royalties would be reinvested in community.

“We carry our whole community on our backs. We look after each other. This book is about saying, look how strong we are. Look how incredible and talented we are.”

The Yield is the work of a major talent. It hypnotises with its lyricism, with the juxtaposition of horror and hope, and the candid look at family, country and history. It’s a work to be savoured, to be enjoyed in the sun on a winter’s day, and then to be shared—as widely as possible!

The Yield is Ms Winch’s second novel, preceded by Swallow the Air (2006) and a book of short stories After the Carnage (2016).

Swallow the Air won the David Unaipon Award and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. It has been on the education and HSC syllabus for Standard and Advanced English in Australia since 2009. Ms Winch is also the recipient of an International Rolex Mentor and Protégé Award enabling her to work under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.

You can buy a copy of The Yield here and can follow Tara on Instagram at @tara_june_winch.