By Bill Day.
Bill Day is
undertaking a PhD in Anthropology at the University Of Western
Australia. He did his fieldwork amongst homeless
Aboriginal people in Darwin from September 1996 to February 1998.
I decided to write the story
of two homeless people to give nameless people a name and voiceless people a
voice. Bob Bunduwabi (Gojok) was a very
close friend and I helped Dulcie Malimara with her ongoing complaint against
the Northern Territory government.
One week before
Christmas in 1996 two officers of the Northern Territory
Police delivered
an eviction notice to an Aboriginal camp at Lee Point on the
edge of Darwin's
northern suburbs. An elderly Aboriginal
man sat on an
old foam mattress
under a blue tarpaulin slung between two trees. Two
artificial legs
were propped in the fork of a tree and a wheelchair stood
by the open fire
where a billy of tea was bubbling.
Pursuant to the
Trespass Act, the
man and his companions were told that they must remove themselves fromvacant
Crown land, forthwith.
The wheelchair
belonged to Gojok who had lived in similar camps at various
sites around the city
for the past fifteen years. Gojok had
been homeless
since the Darwin
leprosarium had closed, leaving the ex-patients to
fend for
themselves after decades away from their people and country.
Ingrid Drysdale
describes how Gojok sought help from the remote
Government
settlement at Maningrida in 1957, when leprosy was rife amongst
Aborigines along
the north coast:
“One day I was
stopped by a young man who had been hiding behind a clump of
pandanus palms. I
noticed he had just enough flesh on one ankle to hold a
bandage where one
foot had been, and enough on the other to maintain his
balance on the
blood-covered stumps. Only part of his hands remained, with
one or two little
inch-long claws in place of the fingers he had lost.
'Sorry missus,' he
said in apology for having startled me.'I wanna
medicine.'
I told him he
could go to our hospital if he promised to remain, and
to this he readily
agreed. We learned that his name was Bunduwabi, and
until he went to
the leprosarium fourteen months later he was the life and
soul of the camp,
always singing, playing his didgeridoo and sticks, and
generally making
everyone feel that it was good to be alive.”
Maningrida was
established after the war to halt the increasing migration
of Arnhem Land
Aborigines to Darwin, hoping to access services
unavailable on the
reserve. Without citizenship and
employment, Aborigines
camping on the
city fringes were not wanted. Many who
were repatriated by
boat walked back
to town.
Gojok knew all the
best campsites around Darwin. For him and his people
the urban bush was
still Aboriginal land. At Lee Point, where he had lived
for the past four
years there was bush food to be cooked on open fires and Gojok's family around
to assist him.
In July 1996 the
camp was suddenly forcibly closed and the people
scattered to
hidden sites around the city. With as
much as they could carry and their five dogs, Gojok and his group moved to Fish
Camp under the Darwin
International
Airport flight path. The site was away from the road but
there was no
water. Out of sight out of mind.
The Lee Point
people had become victims of a campaign to clear homeless people from the city.
A petition signed by 7000 residents had demanded a resolution to the 'itinerant
problem' and on-the-spot fines were enforced for the 'crime' of sleeping in a
public
place. In three months police patrols had picked up
3258 people 'to combat
anti-social
behaviour, drunks and illegal campers'.
Gojok had a dream
of a place to camp for people from central Arnhem Land
with amenities and
shelters which could withstand the wet season storms. After
five months at
Fish Camp without water, he decided to move back to Lee
Point to build his
dream and defy the authorities who evicted him. Fortunately when the police arrived at Lee Point in the week
before Christmas, Gojok had a complaint
against the
Northern Territory government being adjudicated by the NT
Anti-Discrimination
Commission, which enabled him to apply for an interim
order to stay his
eviction. He claimed the government had
failed to
recognise his
special needs and had refused to make land available for town camps. The
complaint stated that 'Aborigines have
been visiting Darwin since white settlement
commenced, and
have a traditional right to camp'.
The Northern
Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission ordered that the eviction be stayed
until February 11th, despite the Government arguing that: “this would be
seen by the public
as discrimination in favour of a particular person on the
grounds of race,
and that would present us with wider problems within the
community with
which we would then have to deal.”
The Northern
Territory government need not have worried.
Gojok died on 22 January 1997, sheltering under his tarp during one of
the wettest months recorded in
Darwin. Within 24 hours a traditional mourning
ceremony was held and his
possessions were
burnt at the Lee point site. The people
from Fish Camp
who cried for
their elder were still without water.
Gojok's complaint had been lodged on their behalf but in the opinion of
the Commission it 'had not survived the death of the complainant'.
Because the
Anti-Discrimination Act required each complaint to be made by
an individual,
Gojok's niece, Dulcie, began the tedious process again from the
begining. Dulcie Malimara has lived in Darwin since
she was seventeen and
her four children
were born in the town hospital. She has
been evicted
from state housing
and claims there is no accommodation to suit the needs of her extended
family. Her complaint quotes the
Minister for Lands, Planning and
Environment who
implied on television that the housing needs of homeless
Aborigines from
remote areas would not be met because “they have their own
Homelands”. This view echoes an editorial in the NT News
which agreed the living
conditions at Fish
Camp are atrocious:
“No one should be forced to live in these
conditions. Importantly the Lee
Point campers have not been forced to live
anywhere. They are from Arnhem
Land which is inalienable freehold Aboriginal land -
the strongest form of
land tenure in the country. If these people want to leave their homelands and live in the
city, they should join the queue like everyone else.”
Gojok regarded
himself as a citizen of Darwin. He and his niece received
no financial gain
from being land owners. They had both previously joined
the very long
queue for accommodation in Darwin to find there was none that
suited their needs. Their choices had run out and they were
forced into Fish Camp where
there is no water
or amenities of any kind. It appears
that to be homeless
in Darwin is to be
without rights.
(Gojok is the
kinship name for Bob Bunduwabi who was prepared to die for his
dream. Permission has been given by his family to
use his name in this
article).