Australia has a past that many of us try to sweep under the carpet. While the media is quick to paint modern Australia as a racist nation (and I’m not here to debate whether we are or not), historically we were much, much worse. There was a time when our aboriginal people, possibly the oldest continuous culture in the world, were not even classed as Australian citizens, were segregated and pushed to live in ‘Aboriginal reserves’ which were typically set on the edge of the towns borders. Can you believe that?
Fifty years ago this year, a group of students from Sydney University, led by Charles Perkins, set off on a bus trip around NSW with Noel Hazzard, a journalist from the Tribune the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia. They were on a mission to expose the discrimination and racism towards Aboriginal people and challenge the rules that many councils had set in their shires. What happened on their trip hit the front page of many newspapers and clearly revealed the discrimination and segregation of aboriginals to the wider Australian population.
When the Tribune closed down they donated all of their images to the State Library of NSW. Those sorting the images for archiving discovered the images taken during the first week or so of the Freedom Ride. There was enough for an exhibit, and along with recordings and minute books from some of the councils, it was revealed for its 50th anniversary.
Part of the Stage 5 History curriculum focuses on Changing Rights and Freedoms which my class is studying this term. Guess where I took them? Yes, we headed to the State Library this week to walk through the exhibit and learn more.
We were blessed to have the curator Ronald Briggs, a Gamilaroi man from Moree, NSW lead us through the Freedom Ride ’65 exhibit. He was very passionate about the narrative of the ride and was able to provide extra information that we hadn’t read during our research. Towards the end of our visit he revealed that the image of Ronald McGrady, one of the first aboriginal children to swim in the Moree Public Pools, was his father. Can you believe that aboriginal children were banned from swimming in the local pool for ‘health reasons’?
This busload of university students set the ball rolling for change in Australia. Only two years after the Freedom Ride ’65, on May 27, 1967, 90.77% of Australians voted ‘yes’ in a constitutional referendum to improve indigenous rights and award citizenship to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Australian children are often bombarded with American history. Most can name Martin Luther King and know about the civil rights movement in the US. I think it is essential that they explore how the civil rights movement unfolded here in Australia.
A visit to explore the Freedom Ride ’65 exhibit at the State Library of NSW is FREE. If you can’t make it to the State Library of NSW you can still peruse the entire Freedom Ride ’65 image gallery online.
