Imagine a campfire, up north in Queensland. There is a canopy of stars, and the flicker of flames. Family and friends are here; there’s been good tucker. It is 1966. The host is Kev Carmody, already well known for his published albums of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island songs. Paul Kelly, a song writer from down south, joins the group; he has come north with his son Declan to meet Kev for the first time. They yarn around the fire.
Kev has his banjo; he keeps strumming as they talk: four chords; 3/4 timing. Paul has his guitar at the ready, they strum together and try out some words. Simple words would fit those chords: ‘from little things big things grow’. The conversation comes around to Vincent Lingiari, his small, determined action was a step towards Land Rights Legislation. Something that seems small can lead to something big. Maybe there is a song in this. ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. It fits the chords. Paul Kelly has a lyric in his mind; they toy with it together. Story telling around the campfire at the end of a good meal is traditional.
Gather ’round people, I’ll tell you a story
An eight-year long story of power and pride
British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiari
Were opposite men on opposite sides.
Vestey was fat with money and muscle
Beef was his business, broad was his door
Vincent was lean and spoke very little
He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow.
When he was a young fella, around 20 years old, Kev heard that Gurindji People were protesting. He heard it on the radio. The story has stayed with him. Gurindji people had been working hard labour just to stay on country where they belonged, and where they must perform their ceremonies. At first, they asked for equal pay with white labourers on the Station. They were refused. It was hard labour, crook backs, just to stay on this Country which was theirs. Kev knew what hard labour was like, he was an Aboriginal drover at the time.
Gurindji were working for nothing but rations
Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land
Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter
Gurindji decided they must make a stand.
Vincent Lingiari was their leader. He said, ‘I’ll do all I can, any way I can! We can withdraw our labour.’
They picked up their swags and started off walking
At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down
Now it don’t sound like much, but it sure got tongues talking
Back at the homestead and then in the town.
The British Vestey Cattle Company tried to bargain but by now the walk-off was about land. The Gurindji clan settled at Wattie Creek and did not budge. The stand-off lasted for close to nine years, the longest strike in history.
Vestey man said, “I’ll double your wages
8 quid a week you’ll have in your hand”
Vincent said, “Uh-huh, we’re not talking about wages
We’re sitting right here ’til we get our land”
Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered
“You don’t stand the chance of a cinder in snow”
Vince said, ‘If we fall, others are rising”
Vincent Lingiari travelled across the nation to lobby parliamentarians. ‘I’ll do all I can, any way I can’, he said. This was a campaign to get land back. Politicians tried to placate him.
“This affair”, they told him, “It’s a matter of state
Let us sort it out while your people are hungry”
Vincent said, “No thanks, we know how to wait”
Then Vincent Lingiari returned in an airplane
Back to his country once more to sit down.
Let the stars keep on turning
“We’ve got friends in the South in the cities and towns”.
Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister. He knew what was at stake and would address it in his inimitable way, with all due ceremony. And so it was that the Gurindji people gained control over a significant part or their homeland. They could live free and hold their ceremonies. The image of tall Gough Whitlam pouring and handful of sand from Country into the hand of the slight, wiry Gurindji Elder, by now partly blind, became a vivid symbol of hope.
’Till one day a tall stranger appeared in the land
And he came with lawyers and
He came with great ceremony
And through Vincent’s fingers poured a handful of sand.
Well, that was the story of Vincent Lingiari
But this is the story of something much more
How power and privilege can, not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law.
What started as a casually recorded song has become an anthem of the Land Rights Movement and a template for other First Nations groups to tell of their own struggles for self-determination.
Yankunytjatjara people of the APY lands created a version of the song and named it ‘From Little Things: Electric Fields’. They use the lyrics and tunes of Kev and Paul; they blend this with a soulful rendering of the chorus in English and two stanzas of story in Yankunytjatjara language. They pay tribute to the Gurindji People and use cultural images with dance and the music. With permission of the Lingiari family they add the voice of Vincent rallying his people in his own language. Kev Carmody watched it and listened. He later said, ‘It floored me’. He was too deeply move to speak.
In the scarring disappointment of the failure of the referendum there are, in various parts of this vast country, small signs of hope not squelched: determined attempts ‘like a cinder in snow’. The Victorian treaty process and the truth telling of Yoorrook is part of this, but that’s another story. There is a spirit that will not be quenched.
Gather ’round people I’ll tell you a story.
Stories and Musings 