5

‘The problem with children,’ Tony Harlowe said to Carol Turner, ‘is that they grow up and learn how to talk. And then learn how to answer back.’

‘Well, children are just a reflection on their parents,’ she replied, one hand resting on her desk, the other on her hip. ‘I always say, you breed ’em, you feed ’em. And you reap what you sow.’

‘You seem to have no shortage of cliches up your sleeve and you don’t have any children.’

‘Well, I just haven’t found the right genetic material to breed with yet. Not through want of trying, mind you, but it seems as though a girl has to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds a handsome prince these days. And I mean a lot. Anyway, you are proud of that daughter of yours. You must have done something right.’

Tony looked at her and smiled. ‘To tell you the truth, I was just glad she didn’t get herself knocked up before she finished high school like all her cousins did. Everything after that has been a bonus.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ Carol smiled back. ‘That’s why you are so good at weaving the “H” word into a conversation.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, like you say, “My daughter - who is studying at Harvard - bought me this for my birthday.” Or, “Carol, what is my next appointment, because my daughter is studying at Harvard and I need to be free before she calls.” ’ Carol gave Tony a smug look.

‘Carol, what is my next appointment, because my daughter - who is studying at Harvard - has turned into a right pain in my ass and I need to be free as soon as I can so I can return home so she can continue to patronise me.’ He looked smugly back.

Carol laughed and checked her computer screen. ‘You have an appointment at four o’clock with a Darren Brown. Wants to talk to you about the Tent Embassy.’

Tony walked back to his office. How rapidly time had passed since Simone was just a little girl, playing under the tables when he was chairing a meeting or delivering a speech. She would sit in the kitchen while he cooked and he’d talk to her about invasion, dispossession, stolen children, stolen wages, Aboriginal sovereignty, all kinds of things. She would hang onto his every word, adoringly.

The next thing she was starting law school, then she was graduating. He thought sometimes he would explode with the pride of seeing her, at how he had made something so beautiful. But clever. So very clever. And that was even before she got accepted to Harvard University.

Carol was right. Since then, every second word from his mouth was ‘Harvard’. But what he couldn’t say - not to anyone, especially not to someone like Carol who seemed so quick to see his imperfections - was that since Simone had been there, since she had achieved this success, she had seemed to have grown disdainful of him, to see him as flawed. She constantly implied that she was disappointed in him.

She had always been a strange creature to him - sophisticated and, he had to admit, spoilt. If he had met a girl like Simone when he was young, he would not have known what to say around her. She spoke French and Spanish, talked on and on about designer this and designer that, attended fancy exhibition openings. She would scoff at the way he ate his scrambled eggs with tomato sauce or roll her eyes at him when he suggested they go fishing. ‘They have these things called shops, Dad, so you can just buy the fish,’ she would say, her hands on her hips. And at those moments he would be struck by how she had her mother’s nose and chin, but unmistakably, undeniably, his eyes, his full mouth and his defiance.

He had protected her from the harshest aspects of life, the things he had seen, had endured, growing up in a small country town full of hate. He thought he had saved her from the bitterness that racism could give you. He had not intended to spoil her, had sent her to spend time with people who didn’t have the advantages she had, so she would have some perspective. So she would know something of life, not be ignorant of the hardship, of the existence he had left behind, of what he had saved her from.

When he gave her lessons in history and politics, this creature he loved more than any other, he felt as though he was trying to impress her. When she looked up at him in those days he felt a pride that made him feel flushed. But she had not looked at him that way for a very long time.

Darren Brown was a handsome young man, with eager eyes, a strong chin and his dark hair pulled back into a thick ponytail. Tony thought he looked like a candidate for Carol’s quest for ‘good genetic material’ and made a note to tease her about it later.

‘It’s such an honour to meet you, sir,’ Darren gushed. ‘My family are Gamillaroi people from Brewarrina.’

‘Please, call me Tony and take a seat,’ he replied with a magnanimous sweep of his hand. Tony felt comfortable in the position of mentor and benefactor. ‘I believe you have come up from the Embassy in Canberra.’

‘Yes, I’ve been there for a few months. I have to say, you are one of the reasons I went there in the first place. I heard you speak at the Invasion Day rally. I had been studying law - well, I’m still enrolled but I have taken leave this year - and what you said just made so much sense. More sense than anything that I was reading at uni, you know?’

‘Well,’ Tony said, using another of his standard lines. ‘The white man’s law is all about power relations and built on the lies of colonisation.’

Tony had always known how to read an audience. It was a gift, one that had served him well most of his days, especially after the Tent Embassy when he became a vocal advocate for the rights of his people. He could sense the audience getting caught up in what he was saying, seemed to know intuitively just what they wanted to hear.

Darren Brown, the young Aboriginal law school drop-out was his target demographic. Tony felt rejuvenated just seeing the look of reverence and animation that Simone had once worn on another young face. He settled back comfortably into his chair.

‘So, what did you want to talk to me about then?’

‘We are trying to get heritage listing for the Tent Embassy. I need to pull together as much information as I can so I can prepare the proposal. So I guess I thought I could interview you now, ask a few questions and, if that’s okay, come back again for some follow-ups.’

‘Sure,’ replied Tony. ‘Whatever you need.’

‘Great,’ Darren smiled. And then, looking serious, ‘It’s such an honour to get this chance to talk to you.’

‘Well, I’m not sure about that,’ responded Tony, attempting modesty. ‘But before you ask away, let me tell you something.’

Aware that Darren was hanging onto his every word, pen poised and writing pad ready, Tony paused for effect. ‘The first thing you need to appreciate,’ he continued, ‘is that the Tent Embassy was the culmination of all the work that had gone on from the 1880s through to the 1930s and beyond to improve the lives of Aboriginal people. But, at the same time, it was the beginning of the modern land rights movement as well.’

Tony leaned a little further back in his chair. Darren, with brow furrowed, scribbled quickly.

‘You see,’ Tony continued, ‘what we did at the Tent Embassy had its intellectual beginnings in the work of men like Fred Maynard, William Cooper and William Ferguson. They were men who worked on the land. They wanted to know why they were stopped from earning their own livelihood, from owning the land themselves when they worked as hard as any white person. They argued for citizenship rights - equal rights - because they had grown up unable to earn equal wages, unable to apply for the same level of financial support as white people when they were unable to find employment, even needing to apply for permission to move from the reserve and to marry.’

Tony watched as Darren tried to write down everything he was saying and paused to give the lad time to catch up.

‘These men, the Maynards and Coopers and the like, they were self-educated men and their Australia was one that was riddled with the inability to enjoy the basic rights and freedoms that all other Australians enjoyed unquestioningly: the right to family, the right to livelihood, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom from racial discrimination.’

Tony was working himself up speaking on one of his favourite themes. He spoke about the way leaders like Maynard and Cooper had believed that Aboriginal people, through their own hard work and initiative, could improve their own socio-economic circumstances and shake off their poverty.

‘What do you think William Cooper would think if he saw the state of Aboriginal communities and families across Australia today?’ Darren asked, looking up as he hunched over his notepad.

‘Hmmm, good question. Well, I’d guess he’d probably be impressed by the way in which our people have gained access in the last three decades to many opportunities that were unthinkable previously. In Cooper’s day, who’d have thought we would have the numbers of Aboriginal graduates from high schools and universities that we have now. We’ve seen more and more Aboriginal people become nurses, teachers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers.’

Tony gave Darren time to catch up. He thought about Simone, how his throat was thick with satisfaction as she walked across the stage in her graduation gown, the hem swaying around her high heels.

Darren looked up from his notebook.

‘How did you come to be at the Tent Embassy?’ Darren asked.

‘I remember hearing through the black grapevine that these blokes - Billy Craigie, Michael Anderson, Bertie Williams and Tony Coorie - had gone to Canberra and set up a protest right in front of Parliament House. I’d grown up on an old mission and me and my mate, Arthur Randall, had hitched rides, jumped a train and even walked part of the way until we got there. Heaps of people had arrived by then.’ Tony could see the images, the crowded tents and tarpaulins as they clustered together on the lawn. He could remember the pungent, rank smells of communal living. ‘We were drawn there by the frustration that nothing had changed since the ’67 referendum.’

Tony explained how people had organised, protested and advocated for the two decades leading up to the vote to change the Constitution in 1967, in the expectation that it would provide new opportunities. ‘But we woke up the morning after and nothing had changed. We came to realise that we needed something more. The time for this movement was ripe. The moment had come. And I just knew that I had to be a part of it.’

When Darren finally looked up at him Tony was reminded of how strong the young man’s features were. Dark eyes and thick lashes. Clear skin. Sleek lines on his face. But he could see something else in Darren, something in the intensity with which he wrote Tony’s answers, with which he had devoted himself to something he believed in. It reminded Tony of himself when he was younger.

‘When I was your age, I didn’t have the opportunities you have now. You should think of that before you throw them away. Why did you drop out of uni?’

‘Family things, I guess. My mother got sick and then I got caught up with this.’ Darren waved his notebook.

‘Well, the Tent Embassy is important. No denying that. And I know how it is with blackfellas and their families. But you’ll be more valuable to our community and better able to provide for them if you get the best education you can. There’s something for you to think about before I see you next.’

*

How easy the telling of this version of history had become, as though it really had been the truth. A favourite theme of his speeches, Tony thought, still sitting at his desk an hour after Darren had left, was the way white history was a fabrication, a story woven with lies. And the irony was that his own history had become the same thing. And while he had told the story of how he had been drawn towards the swelling activity on the lawns of Parliament House, the truth was he had been running away. Running away from secrets, dark secrets.

Tony had invented his own rules for survival back then, a list of five principles he had created during the rough and tumble of that trip to Canberra. He had scribbled down what he referred to as ‘Tony Harlowe’s Five Survival Rules’ on the inside cover of a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of his favourite books, one of the few things he had taken with him when he fled his old life.

One of the rules was to stay in the spotlight. After all, if people don’t see you, how do they know you exist? Everything is judged by appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Tony’s intention was - had been for a long time - to attract attention by being larger, more charismatic, more mysterious than his rivals. Cicero once said that even those who argue against fame still want the books they write against it to bear their name on the cover. We will let our friends share almost anything, but nobody wants to share their fame or reputation.

For years Tony Harlowe had wanted to make a name for himself, had wanted to be someone. The first rule for survival he had written down was ‘Be someone else’. And the Tent Embassy had given him a stepping stone from which to do that.