Charlie Perkins embarks on the Freedom Rides

Chapter 3 by ROD MOSS

I remember the 1965 Freedom Rides driven by Arrernte man Charlie Perkins. The following year media covered the walk off by Gurindji stockmen at Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory.

Apparently, Stan Davey helped organise their protest for improved conditions. Soon he would assist fellow non-indigenous activist, Doug McLeod at Strelley school, teaching English to striking Nyangumarta families in the Pilbara.

These events, coupled with massive civil rights movement in the USA, helped build empathy for First Nations people.

I remember the 1967 successful referendum for constitutional change that bestowed citizenship on Aboriginals. Self-determination replaced assimilation.

The right to equal pay followed. First Nations stockmen and families were turned away. Non-indigenous workers replaced them. The drift to town fringe camps in regional Australia accelerated.

I remember the Dylans. Almost simultaneously Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited deluged me about the time our school staged Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood.

From both poets I garnered language and style to steer me through adolescence into early adulthood.

My actor mates gave voice to Thomas’s sorry lot much as Dylan’s did in his epic masterpiece, Desolation Row.

Artistically gifted Dave Morgan designed the cover of the live recording of the play. He would follow me to art school but soon left to work at the State Museum, helping design the revamped Aboriginal display that made use of their extensive collection of Baldwin Spencer’s fin de siecle photos of the Arrernte in Central Australia.

I remember the 1960s for openness and access to imported traditional practices: meditation, yoga and veganism for instance.

Belief in astrology thrived despite the evidence of advanced astrophysics. Rumours of revitalised paganism were heard in corners of the environmental movement.

My inspiration was George Ivanovich Gurdjieff by way of English philosopher John G Bennett. I spent a year spread between 1978-1979 at the community he founded in West Virginia, studying what I took to be traditional Central Asian teachings.

Bennett seemed to be bridging the rift between scientific enquiry and religious experience. Mornings commenced with numerous one hour mental exercises to strengthen the energy of attention. Another valuable practice related to conscious breathing. Eventually I realized that art rather than religious practice was more likely to provide meaning.

I remember indigenous footballers, Graeme "Polly" Farmer, Syd Jackson, Barry Cable and Robbie Muir, gracing VFL playing fields.

Gary Foley and David Gulpilil appeared on the big screen. Playwrights, Kevin Gilbert and Jack Davis brought their work to the stage. Elsewise little was known or seen of First Nations Peoples in Melbourne.

PAINTING by ROD MOSS: Hunting at Emily Gap 1994, 146 x 240 cm Collection of Cameron Jackson, Hawthorn, Victoria.