Aboriginal singer inspired by Australia’s darkest days
Treasured Aboriginal singer/songwriter Archie Roach found inspiration from being part of Australia’s darkest days.
The young Aboriginal kid grabbed at another beer on the bar and staggered back to his seat. He was still upright – but it was early days, and chances were that he’d black out before evening came around. Same as usual.
Still in his teens, the kid had been a hard-core drinker since he was 15, living his life only half-awake. In 1971, he’d decided to leave Melbourne and go to Sydney to look for his family, but once he got there, the old fella who’d taken him under his wing had told him to pick a new name – a bodgie, he called it – so that when, inevitably, he ended up in a police cell, he could dodge a record under his real name.
It was so-so advice. The old mentor had shown him the ropes: where to get a feed, find a bed, get the beer he was now clutching. And, true, Phillip Brown was now well known to the local police. But hunting down his family was tough when he wasn’t using their surname.
He downed the drink and his mind reached immediately for the next. He stumbled up to the bar, bumping into the cluster of drinkers he’d been knocking around with.
“Slow down, kid. Who you think you are?”
“I’m Archie, that’s who I am,” he slurred under his breath, the alcohol dulling his need to stand by his alias.
The group parted to let the teenager through to the bar. All except Diana, a regular who’d known Phillip for a while but who seemed intrigued by the beersodden confession.
“So, Phillip Brown, what are you really called, kid?”
“It’s Archie.”
“You know your mum and dad’s names?”
“Never knew them. They all died in a fire in the Dandenong. Been living with white families in Melbourne before I came up here. Got a letter a while back said my real mum had passed away. She was Nellie. And now you know my name, you know my dad’s name, too. Archie, Archie Roach.”
The woman knocked him to the ground and started wrestling, tugging his hair, slapping his face, laughing and crying.
“Archie … it’s amazing. It’s amazing,” she panted. “I’m your sister.”
Finding his family was singer-songwriter Archie Roach’s first step to finding the inspiration to perform – and play an important role in Australia’s artistic and political communities.
From that chance meeting in a Sydney bar in the early 1970s, he realised the story of his family dying in a fire was a lie and
that he actually had a network of four sisters, two brothers and countless cousins throughout Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
He doesn’t remember the day the authorities came to his parents’ home in Mooroopna, in rural Victoria’s Goulburn Valley. He doesn’t remember being snatched – with his sisters Gladdie and Diana – and taken to a Melbourne orphanage. He does remember the first two foster families he was sent to live with – cruel people “who didn’t know much about who I was as an indigenous person … even what an indigenous person was”.
And he certainly remembers the third family – the Coxes – where he learnt to love music.
“My foster dad was from Glasgow, Scotland, and he was a beautiful old man who I’ll love till the day I die. He taught me there’s love everywhere – and that’s where my love for music actually started.”
By the time Roach fully understood he was part of what’s now known as the Stolen Generations – the state and churchsanctioned policy of removing children from indigenous homes and placing them with white families throughout Australia – he was already playing and writing music. He had met Ruby Hunter when they were both 16year-olds, both on the streets, both heavy drinkers – but they had bonded over songwriting. By the 1980s, they had formed the Altogethers and moved to Melbourne, where they played songs that spoke directly to the heart of indigenous rights and issues.
Beautiful Child, about a young black kid dying in jail, caught the attention of Aussie rock legend Paul Kelly, who then heard Took the Children Away and decided Roach and Hunter needed a wider audience.
“At the time, I’m just a pretty quiet, private sort of person and I thought about it for a while and I said, ‘No, that’s not a good idea, mate’,” Roach says.
“I remember telling Ruby I couldn’t be bothered doing anything like that, and that’s when she looked at me and said, ‘Well, you know, Archie Roach, it’s not all about you.’ I realised what she meant: that as Aboriginal people, if we’re able to shine, any one of us, we all shine.”
He shined. Took the Children Away won two Australian Recording Industry Association music awards and an international Human Rights Achievement Award and led to world tours with Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, Patti Smith and Billy Bragg.
So, after being part of the music, arts and social movement that eventually led to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations, does Roach feel the country has become a better place because of their campaigning?
“Yeah, I think so. Before [the apology], people were just standing still and it seemed like we couldn’t go anywhere until that happened. So it was a way of opening that gate, where now you
“I realised what Ruby meant: that as Aboriginal people, if we’re able to shine, any one of us, we all shine.”
can move on. You know something will always be there; we won’t forget, but we can move on and start healing.”
Healing is something Roach knows a lot about. In 2010, the year Hunter died, he had a stroke. The next year, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He admits it nearly drove him back to alcohol – something he’d kicked in the 90s when Hunter took their children and walked out on him, saying she wouldn’t return until he’d dried out – but his music, friends and family pulled him through.
Most of the songs on his most recent album, Let Love Rule, are a combination of Christian messages and indigenous spirituality – as well as a deeply felt love for his land.
“I was taken away from my family as a kid, but later, when I found my family and realised I was Aboriginal, there was a lot of love, a lot of love and sharing and caring,” he says. “So I thought, just go a bit further and go beyond that, go beyond your Aboriginal people and reach out to all people.
“There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing – but if I stop doing this, I think it’d be the end of me, yeah, for sure.”