Author's speech

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"Hello. Thank you for your kind welcome.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and thank you for allowing us to launch this story in this beautiful part of Yalanji country.

When I was a little girl and going to school in Sydney I made a model of the first fleet, landing at Sydney Cove. I remember very clearly making little pipe cleaner people and little boats and setting them up in a miniature re-enactment.

Along with the white pipe cleaner sailors, my teacher instructed me to make black pipe cleaner people and to put them at the back of the cardboard box so they could look over the historical landing.

I’m not sure if it was the way my teacher spoke or if it was her lack of an explanation as to who these stick figures were but something intrigued me and I wanted to know more.

I asked my teacher who the black pipe cleaner people were and where had they gone for I had never seen them on the banks of Sydney harbour.

My teacher said with authority; they have all died. Like all good eight year olds I filed my lesson away in the back of my mind. Within the year my family circumstances changed and I moved from inner city Sydney to Darwin. I clearly remember being shocked for there, alive and well, were the dark-skinned people that my teacher had only recently told me were all dead.

It was a memorable moment in my life and it triggered in me a desire to know the history of my country of birth and to find out why the truth was being hidden.

Over the years I came across many stories. One story though, intrigued me so much that it eventually inspired my life for more than two years.

Norman Baird.

I feel privileged that I have had the opportunity to tell his story and I thank three special women Polly, Annie and Ivy for sharing a part of their lives to help this story surface.

It was with great excitement that I compiled this bit of information and that bit. It was a complex puzzle that slowly but surely was pieced together to re-create his life.

I remember the day that I finally saw Norman’s photo which was taken in 1917 just after he enlisted for the first World War.

We had spent months trying to track it down from Cooktown to Mena Creek, near Innisfail. We were told that Kerry MacGillivray had the original photo as Norman had posted it to her grandfather, however Kerry couldn’t remember having the photo. (She was pregnant at the time and some of us know what that can do to our memories.)

Kerry, between bouts of morning sickness, persevered with the search but after a month advised us that it didn’t appear she had it after all.

It wasn’t until Cyclone Larry battered our coastline that the photo resurfaced as flooding forced Kerry to move and repack some old boxes.

It was a special moment when we finally had a chance to hold the 89 year old photo signed by Norman.

Equally special was the day I saw a copy of Norman’s personal file from the State Archives. There it was in black and white, a trail of evidence that detailed the campaign to discredit him.

But nothing could compare with reading the letters Norman himself had written.

In 1955 Norman wrote a letter to the Cooktown Protector of Aboriginals beseeching the department to do something about the desperate situation that Bama had been forced into.

Norman was sixty-six years old when he wrote this letter and even at this ripe old age he told the protector that he would carry on with the good work he was doing as long as there was ‘a spark left within’.

In this letter he writes about his concern for the welfare of his community and how bureaucratic process was depriving Bama of their rights.

He wondered also if he was contributing as much as he could and if he was on the right track because he did not feel his efforts were appreciated.

Finally he asks if the time will arrive when the younger generation will show some gratitude on behalf of the community. I never met Norman as he died when I was three years old but I have read and re read this letter and I think out of all his letters this one sums up who Norman Baird was,

He was a man who despite feeling as though no progress was being made and that little if any justice was forthcoming, continued to work for the betterment of his people until the end of his life.

I don’t know if Norman ever received the gratitude he wrote about in this letter but I would personally like to express my gratitude for the work he did and with the knowledge gained from this book I hope many others can do the same.

Thank you."

Kathleen Denigan