Entering Adelaide
Tuesday, June 6th, I flew Virgin Atlantic from Sydney to Adelaide for the second phase of my journey.
The trip was such a civilized experience: short lines, quiet gate areas; it was my first experience of an Australian domestic air terminal, an easy and pleasant one. I'll warn, however, that the luggage weight restrictions are serious - 32 kg for checked bags with a A$75 overage fee, and 7 kg for a carryon plus a small personal item (note that no one weighed my backpack; apparently, they only spot check some bags randomly)..
Landing at Adelaide, my dear friend Colleen was able to meet me AT THE GATE! In Australia, this is allowed for domestic flights, as is a full personal water bottle (!) and wearing sneakers through the security check(!). Kind of unbelievable to this American. The big, beautiful, fairly new terminal at Adelaide Airport was spacious and included a modest amount of useful retail options rather than the shopping-mall feel that other airports sometimes have.
I know Colleen and Bernie from two trips to Myanmar, 2002 and 2015, each a month long and organized by our mutual close friend Thet Win. I've been long overdue for a visit to them, since they'd visited Boston twice, and my current trip to Australia was forceably postponed in 2020. So, in the luxury of Colleen and Bernie’s personal car I arrived at their beautiful home in the Blackwood hills above the Adelaide plains.
Adelaide is a metropolitan area of about 1.3M people, situated on the eastern shore of St. Vincent’s Gulf in the state of South Australia. The city and suburbs are largely situated in a very flat plain that extends east from the shore, then in some of the rolling foothills that emerge to encapsulate it. Despite the bright greenness of the vegetation right now, in winter, it feels a good bit like California in terms of settlement patterns, landscapes and climate. Ironically, irises are blooming here right now, just as they are in the late spring of coastal Massachusetts.
Bernie's daughter and granddaughter came for dinner that night, and it was a reunion because they'd been a part of the second Myanmar trip as well. I also met Bernie's son, of whom I'd heard so much. Over a dinner of a "pork roast and veg on the barbie," we traded stories of our time in Myanmar, caught up on the latest in everyone's lives and had a lot of laughs. There is a strong vein of jokes in the Australian culture, with a constant patter of one-liners..
The next morning, Bernie had a couple things to do so Colleen and I headed out to on a walk in their neighborhood. The first visit was to a local reconciliation park, a local action and space meant to help heal divisions between the descendants of Australian settlers and the indigenous peoples. This was another step in my education on these delicate cultural issues, as begun in Sydney.
The modes of potential reconciliation between descendants of the Australia's settlers and the indigenous peoples, of which the park is a minor representation, are a current topic of conversation - controversy? - mentioned by several people I've met with. It is also the topic of an upcoming referendum on a proposed amendment to the Australian Constitution, which will trigger a nationwide vote near the end of 2023. The amendment itself is seen by some as a next step in a continuing process foster constructive dialogue and find positive ways to move forward together:
The draft question that will be put to voters is whether to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice....
While a date hasn’t been announced, the Federal Government has stated its intention to hold the referendum sometime between September and December 2023. Exact timing is a matter for Government....(https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/2023-referendum.htm)
Language from the official referendum briefing includes these purposes:
to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia;
to provide for the establishment of a new constitutional entity called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
to set out the core representation-making function of the Voice; and
to confer upon the Parliament legislative power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
What I am told is that there are two camps: one that feels this is long overdue and a positive step forward, a necessary one; and another, that feels it is unnecessary and, well, silly. there isn’t yet a strong sense of whether or not the referendum will pass. I've only been to two Australian states so far, New South Wales and South Australia, but have already heard much about how different each state is in terms of policy, culture, even speaking accents and idioms; I would guess there are differences in their attitudes towards indigenous peoples, not necessarily good or bad, just different. I'm also still learning about the dividing lines between federal, state and local powers, and while I don't know much yet, it sounds like the states have a lot of power; the passage of this measure requires majorities in every state as well as nationwide. (Note: The Northern Territory is just that, a territory, and not a state; no one seems concerned.)
As Colleen and I approached the The Colebrook Blackwood Reconcilitation Park (here) down a busy suburban road, I was unsettled by the many drawn and colored paper hands reaching up from the soil, as if from the past or from a grave. The park is on the former site of Colebrook, a children's home where aboriginal children removed from their families stayed. The home's history had two phases: a first phase in which two nuns cared for a small number of children, seemingly necessary care. Sometimes parents, whether aboriginal or settler, placed a child in the home. However, at the end of the nuns’ lives, the state took over the home. More children were separated from their families to live there, likely from more forcible extractions, and the poor treatment of the children increased too. Some of the children who lived there in the late 1960's and early 1970's still live in the nearby community, and some of their voices and stories are presented in audio recordings onsite.
"Colebrook started with Sister R. Hyde and Sister D. Rutter. They were Colebrook. What we had was constant love and attention from these two remarkable ladies. After they left, those kids went through hell on earth. They had to rely on each other to survive."
- Faith Thomas, former resident of Colebrook Home.
A community fire pit was a central, centering element
Bernie joined us as we traversed the site, moving through the story told in writings on traditional plaques, sculptures, a fountain, audio pylons, an outdoor fire pit featuring colorful mosaics, and an open air community shed containing illustrations and murals. A flowing fountain - representing overflowing tears - and faces carved into its surface starkly conveyed the grief of both the parents and the children separated. Designed for gathering, there is regular programming there to bring people together for community, through contemplation of this sad history and hope for a better future.
Murals generated by schoolchildren
I was reminded of something I saw in a short film in Sydney, that the children were taken from their families to attend mainstream schools, once reaching adulthood, often felt excluded from both mainstream culture and their family/culture of origin - as if they did not “fit” anywhere. Of course, the U.S and Canada share with Australia this need to reconcile with the indigenous peoples who were mistreated, exposed to disease, robbed of their land, murdered. In the U.S., I live a long way from the sites of residential schools that housed children of the First Nations separated from their families and tribes and passed on similar consequences to the ones in Australia.. I wonder whether models like this park, with its use as a shared meeting space, and other Australian reconciliation actions might be useful in the U.S. or Canada. Certainly in the U.S. we have very far to go to adequately acknowledge the First People's precedence in our country. I'm not aware of any other gestures beyond the geographical acknowledgement of the original peoples occupying a location, which seems like a small start. If other gestures are taking place, wider publicity and education would be important to spread the word.
Bernie and Colleen
Leaving the park, the walk continued through various residential blocks and a complex network of pedestrian paths leading to a large, grassy, treed, undeveloped ravine whose steep green slopes defined an open space corridor.
They were taking me to this ravine because it's known that wild kangaroos congregate there. The large group of kangaroos - giant ones, small ones, in between - we found there remind me so strongly of a herd of deer: tall ears, lovely black eyes, long tan faces ended with black noses, and peacefully lounging or grazing. Later, even local friends of Colleen and Bernie's expressed surprise that wild kangaroos gathered right in the middle of a settled suburb.
Coming up: a brief venture into the city, another into vineyard and farm country, and then a week of travel to the Flinders Ranges.
