Aboriginal musician and artist who was the voice of the stolen generations
The day that came to define Archie Roach, who has died aged 66, occurred when he was only a few years old. This was around 1960, when government agencies forcibly took him and his siblings away from their parents.
In his autobiography, Tell Me Why, Roach recounts a memory that came back to him many years later of his screaming father being restrained by a policeman while the children were loaded into a large black car. That was the last time he saw his parents.
Life as a foster child was his new reality until he was 14, when a letter from older sister Myrtle told him his mother had died and his father was already dead.
This was the first he knew he had a family beyond
Dulcie and Alex
Cox, who had raised him for nearly a decade. Myrtle’s letter plunged him into a chasm of resentment and anger.
Only much later would he find redemption in the love of his soulmate and wife, Ruby Hunter, and in music.
Took the Children Away, the powerful song he penned in 1988, helped heal not just his wounds, but those of countless other stolen generations members. Released in 1991, it reflected Roach’s gift for writing and singing with truth and an open heart, and was the first song to win an international Human Rights Achievement Award.
Archibald William Roach was born in Mooroopna, in central Victoria, to Archie Roach and Nellie Austin. His father achieved some success as a professional boxer, and the couple already had two boys and four girls when Archie arrived.
They moved to Framlingham Aboriginal Mission in south-west Victoria, from where Archie – affectionately known as ‘‘Butter Boy’’ – and his sisters were stolen. He spent time in an orphanage and two ill-judged foster homes before his luck changed with the Coxes, Scottish immigrants with a fondness for music who lived in Melbourne.
The day he received the letter from Myrtle, his world, he said, ‘‘started to spin’’. At 15, he left school with the loose intention of finding his family, never to see the Coxes again. Lost and lonely, he slept rough, was routinely jailed for begging and vagrancy, and began drinking. By chance, he met his sister, Diana, and learned about his other siblings. Roach and Diana were separated when a magistrate forcibly deported him to Melbourne, aged 16.
He stumbled through various jobs, including boxing. When he hitchhiked to Mildura to pick fruit he was wrongly arrested for car theft in Echuca and jailed for a year, initially suffering acute alcohol withdrawals. Freed after six months, he tossed a coin and hitched to Adelaide.
It was a lucky spin, because there he met Hunter, a stolen member of the Ngarrindjeri people. In Melbourne, Hunter conceived a stillborn child, before giving birth to Amos –
‘‘When one of us shines, we all shine.’’
Archie Roach’s wife Ruby Hunter urging the reluctant musician to record his songs.
an event Roach described as lighting a musical fire in him. He began absorbing the folk of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie, and his beloved country music. Hunter bore a second son, Eban, and they moved to Murray Bridge, where Roach worked at an abattoir and salt lake.
He returned to Melbourne for brother Johnny’s funeral, and then was admitted to hospital by an alcoholinduced seizure when back in Murray Bridge. In Adelaide, he was transferred to a mental health facility. Hunter had him released and they returned to Melbourne, but the drinking didn’t stop and she left with the boys. Roach eventually joined AA and turned his back on alcohol forever.
Reunited with Hunter and his boys, he became a rehab counsellor and began to write songs, often about the plight of others. Soon he began to perform them amid a repertoire of country classics at informal gigs.
He sang Took the Children Away at the 1988 Aboriginal protest against bicentennial celebrations, and it resonated widely. Singersongwriter Paul Kelly asked him to open for Kelly’s band at the Melbourne Concert Hall – Roach’s biggest gig so far. When Kelly proposed that Roach record, he was reticent, so Hunter virtually commanded he do it for his people. ‘‘When one of us shines, we all shine,’’ she said.
Hunter began writing songs herself, including the great Down City Streets, included on Roach’s 1990 debut album, Charcoal Lane. They also co-founded Black Arm Band, a collective of Aboriginal artists with a focus on protest songs. In 2008, he played in Melbourne’s Federation Square when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered his apology to the stolen generations.
In 2009, Hunter died, and a year later Roach suffered a stroke on top of the cancer that had already invaded his lungs. Although needing oxygen and having a compromised strumming hand, he began writing songs and touring once more.
In 2019, he released his hugely engaging autobiography, Tell Me Why. He is survived by Amos and Eban and foster children Kriss, Arthur and Terrence. – Sydney Morning Herald
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