DAME QUENTIN BRYCE

Fighting for Lockhart’s children

For 15 years Dame Quentin Bryce has been visiting Lockhart River. It’s here she has forged her most treasured friendships and on a poignant trip with The Weekly, she introduces Juliet Rieden to the women Elders now fighting for a future for their children.

There’s an aura to Lockhart River. It’s like no other and it hits you from the moment you touch down on the rich red earth of the tiny airstrip in this remote northernmost town on the east coast of Australia. It’s something to do with the extraordinary virgin landscape, so beautiful it makes you gasp; but also to do with the people, whose mostly quiet resilience has kept this place together.

The spirit of Lockhart soars in the soulful work of the town’s famous “Art Gang”, a growing “mob” of acclaimed Indigenous artists whose paintings are collected around the world. In the calm of the afternoon,

The Art Centre studio is a place of

therapeutic contemplation – and colourful pots of paint – where Lockhart’s stories are told on canvas. They are about the wonder of nature, the very essence of humanity, and they reveal something hidden inside.

Lockhart’s tight-knit mostly Indigenous community of about

700 people is keen to look to the future, while also paying due respect to the struggles of the past. Here Elders have joined together to take leadership positions, working within the structure of council and government, while also staying true to their culture and customs. It’s a delicate balance which doesn’t always work and is bruised by contemporary ills ranging from unemployment and domestic violence, to alcohol abuse, suicide and teenage delinquency; but the passion is palpable and infectious.

Since Dame Quentin Bryce first visited Lockhart River in 2004 as Governor of Queensland, this unique part of the Cape York Peninsula and especially its courageous women Elders have got under her skin. “There was nothing there back then. I used to stay wherever I could find a mattress – somebody would find me something. I can hang out anywhere,” says Quentin. “But now it is brilliant to see the lovely tourist cabins near the airport. It’s such a gorgeous experience for people who come to visit, and has become especially popular with bird watchers.”

Quentin tells me she felt a deep sense of honour meeting the women

of Lockhart, and over the ensuing years has developed treasured friendships that have changed her life. “They’re more than good friends; they’re everything to me,” she explains. “I think I’m enormously privileged to have these friendships. I admire them so much. Lucy [Hobson, now 69], who has worked for so long to document her own language. She’s one of the last people, if not the very last, who can do that. Dorothy [Hobson, 59], who has wonderful leadership skills and a capacity for making things happen, she’s a very strategic thinker. She’s got a strong personality but she’s also incredible fun. So is Veronica [Piva, 76], who is totally committed to Lockhart. I talk to them and they talk to me about things that are deep in our hearts.”

Quentin has been itching to introduce The Weekly readers to Lockhart River, and we have been planning this trip for a while. But we were all set to go in 2018 when tragedy struck. Tanya Koko, 37, the inspirational manager of the then new childcare centre Quentin has so fervently championed, was killed in a road accident and a pall of mourning descended on the community.

Tanya’s was one of a string of deaths that have hit Lockhart hard in the past 18 months, and the community is only just coming out of the “sorry business” which brings everyone’s lives to a halt. “When you look at Indigenous culture, there’s one key word that is the cornerstone and that’s respect,” explains Mayor Wayne Butcher, who grew up in Lockhart River. “To have respect, you must earn respect. When someone passes on, it just brings the whole community together and strengthens our beliefs and our culture of respect. But it’s true, it does some days feel like you’ve climbed a mountain so far and someone’s just put a bucket of grease under your shoe and you’ve just slid back so many years, because it’s 12 months when you grieve for the immediate family.”

Consequently, a year after our original planned trip, we are now arriving in Lockhart and it is a relief when we walk down the steps from the plane to see Dottie (Dorothy), Lucy and Veronica waving and laughing, eager to welcome their best mate back on country. It’s a bond that has been long nurtured and very quickly these powerful women and old friends are chatting, hugging and sharing news.

Governor’s sleepover

In her role as Governor and later Governor-General, Quentin was determined to reach the remotest parts of Australia, to invite these communities into her domain. And after that first meeting in 2004, she welcomed Dottie, Lucy and Veronica to stay at Government House in Brisbane. “We loved the big beds,” Dottie recalls. “I remember I caught them bouncing on them one day,” adds Quentin, as all three collapse into giggles. The Lockhart Elders became regular visitors and very special to the Bryce family.

“I really got to know them when they came to ‘my place’. I feel so proud of them. I wanted to show them off because a lot of people in Brisbane would never have the opportunity to meet women like that.

“They loved the holiday and yes, the beautiful bedrooms with the four-poster beds – there was such joyousness and fun. We made a great fuss of them and made sure that as many people as possible had the chance to talk to them.”

As Quentin got to know Lucy, Dottie and Veronica’s families, they in turn became part of hers.

They met her “old fella” – that’s husband Michael Bryce – and her children, all the time sharing stories from Lockhart.

“It was a lovely thing for my children to meet them. They have such a ticklish sense of humour and I can remember them teasing our youngest son Tom about girlfriends. They’re so easy to connect with. It’s the way women around the world, whoever we are, wherever we come from, whatever we do, we link up so easily because our priorities are absolutely the same. They’re the future of our children and our grandchildren, their health, education, employment opportunities. Then there’s also the fabulous sitting around yarning.”

When, aged 65, Quentin was sworn in as our first female Governor-General,

Lucy was there at Yarralumla watching on. And later in 2010 Dottie, Lucy and Veronica all stayed with Quentin in Canberra. “It was an honour to be at Quentin’s ceremony – to have Indigenous people there was ground-breaking,” Lucy tells me.

As a young girl at school in Queensland, Quentin, now 76, says she knew very little about Aboriginal people. First Nation history was barely taught and it wasn’t until she was 35 and met Connie Bush, the much-loved Elder from Groote Eylandt in East Arnhem, an inaugural member of the National Women’s Advisory Council to the Fraser government, that she started to establish meaningful connections with Indigenous

Australia. As a mother of five, Quentin was determined her children would have a better grounding in Aboriginal culture. “I was thrilled to have the friendship of Connie. She used to come and stay with us in Brisbane. My kids would sit and listen to her. They were quite sceptical about the stories she’d tell them about snakes and serpents and the great goannas, but they loved introducing her to their friends.”

Lockhart’s heart

Just over 10 years ago, Quentin secured her special connection with Lockhart River when she became Patron of the Puuya Foundation, a dynamic initiative to develop everyday leaders to transform Lockhart River’s future from the inside. The founder and CEO Denise Hagan, a small business manager turned teacher turned senior executive in Queensland’s civil service, was also someone Quentin has nurtured. “Quentin’s an amazing person because she has this unwavering commitment to having the voices of Indigenous people heard, especially women, and she has lived that, not just spoken about it, and acted on things over and over,” explains Denise. “It’s not just words; it’s real.”

Like Quentin, Denise had fallen in love with Lockhart. She was posted there as part of the Queensland government leadership team to try and find out exactly what this struggling community needed. Many residents are welfare dependent, and the town’s unemployment rate is more than three times the national average. “I came for three months and stayed for five years” says Denise, who later returned for good. “I couldn’t believe the disadvantage. I just thought, this is Queensland. This is Australia. This is today. And the disadvantage that existed here, it’s not right. I was a bureaucrat. I’d read all the stuff, I’d seen some of it on TV, but when I got here it really hit me ... and then I met the most inspiring people.”

When the government transferred Denise back to Brisbane she was frustrated. She wrote a huge report on Lockhart and resigned. “I decided I had one life, and I wanted to make a difference.” Denise has a sensitive, spiritual heart, but she is also steely when it matters, fiercely intelligent, pragmatic and determined to implement change. When I ask her what the biggest issues were back then, she throws up her hands. “It was everything ... poor education, poverty – all the things that we in a normal white world take for granted – shockingly overcrowded houses, and children that were beautiful but I could see, the longer I lived here, their

light went out because they just got further and further behind. A lot of that was systemic racism. Things inbuilt into the system, deliberately or not, that worked against people.”

What Denise found most heartbreaking was that the Lockhart people “didn’t feel they had a right to dream, to have a vision for themselves for the future. I had to do something about it,” she tells me.

Denise set to work raising money to establish the Puuya Foundation and continued to make visits to Lockhart. “One year I camped on the beach as there was nowhere to stay. I might be the only CEO who had a bucket bath and bush toilet!” Five years ago she moved full-time to Lockhart and is now a pivotal member of the community.

“I created the Puuya Foundation as a leadership space. It was deliberately set up where the majority of members were local leaders so that they made the decisions. They trusted me, which I thank them enormously for, and I didn’t really know the journey I was on – I just figured out what was happening wasn’t working.

“When I set up the Foundation, my dad came up here to visit me; he said, Lockhart’s like a lost world, orbiting on its own. It’s so remote and at that time we didn’t have mobile phones working here or anything. And because we’re cut off by the wet season, we’re like an island and travel is so expensive, it could be just on its own. It’s like we’ve been forgotten by the rest of Australia.”

“I’m enormously privileged to have these friendships.”

The Foundation has been lifechanging for the community and for the Elders. Dottie is now Chair of the Board, with Veronica a Director. “The Foundation was named ‘Puuya’ which means ‘strong spirit’, ‘strong heart’. It’s the most important thing; then other things follow, and culture is key because it’s who you are.”

Past pain

Lockhart River’s history is complex and the community today comprises a number of different cultures who were thrown together and moved from their land by Anglican missionaries in 1924. People from five traditional Aboriginal territories in the area were coerced into a new Anglican mission, which locals now refer to as “Old Site”. They spoke different languages and were not used to living together, and to make matters worse missionaries banned them from speaking their native languages. Then in 1970 a new site for the Lockhart River community was established near the Iron Range airstrip and all residents were relocated there.

This upheaval is a dark shadow in the past of every family’s life here, a source of post-traumatic stress that has never truly been acknowledged.

“I was born at Old Site in 1960 and then we moved over here. I remember the move,” says Dottie, who is from the Kuuku Ya’u clan. “We came in a boat, my dad driving it with all our stuff. Old Site was lovely. Our house was right on the beach. And then, all of a sudden, we had to move. Most didn’t want to come. My father’s mother and father were buried there at Old Site but there was no choice.”

Trying to unite the eight clans that make up Lockhart’s community today is a challenge and one of the key tools, implemented by Jim Varghese, Puuya Foundation’s Deputy Chairman and then Lockhart’s state government champion for the area, was the use of “learning circle” conversations.

“Learning circles are a bit like the old camp fires, you check in and you check out. And I hadn’t realised that when we introduced learning circles we introduced social infrastructure

by accident,” says Jim. “All participants of the learning circle have an equal opportunity and role to offer.”

It was at one of these circles that the Lockhart community decided that they needed an early learning centre and “the dream of the Kuunchi Kakana (families together) Centre was born”. The idea was for a place for parents and grandparents to bring children aged zero to four before they hit the school system. Those early years are pivotal for brain development and Lockhart’s children deserved the same earlylearning support other children around the country receive.

It was a bold idea and at a round table in Brisbane, Quentin introduced her good friends and philanthropists Tim and Gina Fairfax to “yarn with” the Lockhart Elders and Denise.

The Tim Fairfax Family Foundation (TFFF) had already been giving some support to the area, but this was a much bigger ask. “Our initial thoughts were what a fantastic place to try and champion a community that was really trying to forge ahead and become so independent,” says Gina, who is now a regular visitor to Lockhart River. The TFFF pledged a grant which brought their total funding for Lockhart to more than $1.5 million over eight years to support the Puuya Foundation’s work, including the childcare centre.

“The Fairfaxes then introduced us to [construction magnate and philanthropist] Robin Murphy who said, ‘I’d like to give you a small building,’” recalls Denise. “I thought, someone’s pulling my leg. He said, no, I’m serious.”

“It’s like we’ve been forgotten by the rest of Australia.”

The yarning circle

On arrival at Lockhart, Quentin and The Weekly team are taken straight to the Kuunchi Kakana Centre, where we join one of the regular “culture” mornings. In the sand circle outside the centre, children of all ages are in traditional body paint and grass skirts dancing to Father Brian’s Clap Sticks and the Warup Drum played by Mayor Wayne Butcher. Little Noah, age three, totally steals the show jumping with his arms outstretched as this traditional dance plays out. It’s a moving display of joy and custom.

Afterwards we all gather in a “yarning circle” and we hear about the benefits of the centre with its Montessori methods. It’s early days, but so far the children who have started their education here are showing more aptitude for learning in primary school.

But it’s not been plain sailing. A bus drives around every morning and while there is a hard core of between five and 12 who regularly attend, not enough locals are embracing the centre. Denise says the past year of “sorry business” has set them back.

At the school next door, the Girls From Oz are visiting. This performing arts group of young women comes to Lockhart a few times a year to work with the Puuya Foundation and the school. They use singing and dancing as a hook to inspire and motivate girls. Watching them coax Lockhart’s youth to join in is a delight.

But there is still a great deal to be done. Lockhart River’s one store has limited supplies and prices for basic items like a tin of beans are astronomic. The council is training locals to build the new housing that is underway but it is a slow process and for the moment a lot of the tradesmen are from outside. And even though the town is dry, sly grog is sneaked in, so plans for a controlled local pub are under consideration. Whether this will help or hinder the high rates of suicide and domestic violence is a matter of dispute. But the burning issue as we go to print is how to fund the childhood centre. “Some of our grants are ending and we just don’t have enough to keep going.” says Denise.

Jim Varghese adds, “I think we – Australia – are letting Lockhart River down. The centre should be funded by the government under the Closing the Gap policy, but it’s not.”

“Children are the priority in Lockhart,” pleads Dame Quentin. “What I want to do for all kids who live in remote Australia is give them the opportunities that are taken for granted in the cities ... I wish more Australians could come and see wonderful communities like Lockhart, that magnificent landscape, to meet the people and explore their culture. People who do go there and spend some time there are hooked.” AWW

To find out how you can help, visit puuya.foundation/how-you-can-help.