As a child, I had an Aboriginal friend. I don’t remember her name. We were both day students at St Catherine’s Girls’ Orphanage in Geelong in the late 50s. It must have been a conveniently located school/child disciplinary centre, as I was not an orphan. In my mind’s eye I can still see the well-to-do home where my friend lived. In adulthood, when I realised my friend must have been part of the Stolen Generation, I felt sad, and sick. I remember her as quiet, warm, and kind. I feel like crying.
Cut to Alice Springs June 2021. My sister Margaret and I have been to the Tip Shop for an exhibition of recycled sculptural pieces, and have ventured into town for a drink. We wander in and out of a couple of venues before passing The Rock Bar. The large windows on both sides of the door present a view inside. Immediately obvious is the fact the place is full of Indigenous people. I’m instantly taken aback. I’ve never seen a pub with only Indigenous people inside, like never in my life.
‘Evening ladies!’ the white guy at the door ventures as we pass. We nod, grin, and keep walking. Within a few strides, I stop. ‘Shall we go back?’ I want in. I want to unsee colour. We stall for a minute, Margaret slightly more hesitant, and head back.
‘Coming in?’ the same guy asks, a wide smile creasing his animated face. He walks us to the bar, and stays close for a few minutes. He’s looking after us, I muse, aware of a creeping discomfort in my bones. Our whiteness attracts an intense gaze. I’m seen. This is ironic because I’ve spent a good deal of my life thinking about this very subject, the importance of being seen, and heard. During my travels in the past five months, I’ve felt othered. Being single and travelling roads traversed by mainly couples I’ve felt excluded from conversation, excluded from the status quo, ignored.
This is different though. I’m seen in circumstances where I feel I don’t belong.
We’re escorted out the back where a crowd of a couple of hundred people are dancing enthusiastically to an upbeat Aboriginal band, MB Reggae. They’re good. Apart from the guy on the sound desk, we’re the only whites out here as well. Although I’m barely seeing outside my own uneasiness, I feel a probing gaze that unsettles and unnerves me.
It’s not long before a woman approaches us, puts her arm around my shoulders. We bob along to the sounds. A couple more women approach us, their sociability reassuring. I pull out my tobacco pouch to roll a smoke, and offer it, the women taking a pinch, rolling it in the palm of their hands and placing it in their mouths. Tooth to jowl, the crowd whoops and cheers, their fists raised, their solidarity compelling.
But all is not well within. A couple of times I look around. The mob is eighty per cent men, many dancing, many holding up the walls. The feeling of scrutiny creates a terrible discordance. I’m at sea, unable to reconcile my intuitive sense we don’t belong, are unwelcome. I feel a hand on my arm and turn. A woman catches me off guard, whispers in my ear. ‘… men rape … you’re not safe’. I look her in the eye, see her upset, her insistence. She is protecting us. ‘Go home.’ She repeats, over and over.
So this is what othering feels like. A particularly insidious, too-common characteristic of the world we live in.
Stepping outside my comfort zone has had a positive effect though. My empathy has grown muscle, given voice to that part of me that feels for and cares about the lived experience of the marginalised, and vulnerable.
I wanted to not see colour. Who was I kidding? Sixty years on from my childhood experience, the awful reality of division continues.
