Small gestures of hope

A younger version of me with Wurundjeri elder, Auntie Joy Murphy Wandin in Healesville. Newspaper clipping from p8. The Mansfield Courier Wednesday June 30, 1999.

I never used to celebrate Australia Day. I felt shame and sorry about colonisation and didn’t know how to express this.

This morning, as I listened to the artistic director of the Sydney festival, Wesley Enoch being interviewed on SBS, I suddenly feel hope. He said that while we can’t change the date of Australia Day, what we can do is hold The Vigil on January 25 “to reflect on the state of our nation in a way that’s not divisive or argumentative.” You can read more about this on Broadsheet.

So now Australia Day can be a celebration of resilience and survival against all odds and that works for me.

This innovative idea is a constant reminder that art and artists can change people’s thinking. That small ideas, small gestures contribute to the greater collective consciousness. Art can provide a space for healing, can speak of the unspeakable but also show beauty through a lens into the future.

I included the picture from a newspaper clipping about my play The Widow of Wappan which I wrote and directed back in 2003. It took five years of on and off writing and researching to finally get it onto the stage.

What I learnt personally was about the hidden history of Australia. It also politicised me, for I was learning stories that were omitted from the history I was taught at school, or even at university. The great Australian silence. 

My play was a gesture of reconciliation at a time when this movement was gaining momentum to counteract the policies and racism under John Howard’s Prime Ministership. This reconciliation movement was a groundswell of ordinary people who felt strongly that attitudes had to change and it propelled people to walk across bridges, any bridge in any town to begin the journey of healing which in turn led to the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd delivering the National Apology in 2008.

When my play went on stage in Mansfield and later in Healesville in 2003, I felt it had been unsuccessful. What I didn’t realise that it was an act of healing, an opportunity for discussion and recognition. The play and its spin off, Project Wappan, enabled the establishment of the Mansfield Reconciliation Group, the Delatite Indigenous Reference Group and a grant to erect a Scarred Tree and Indigenous precinct next to where the Visitor Information stands. Now when you drive into the town there is a sign up saying Welcome to Taungurung country, which makes me very proud.

I believe in small gestures of hope. I work towards putting these out into the world in whatever way I can. Together we can dream a fairer, just and compassionate society into existence. It is happening as each person awakens to their own powerful beingness. As we begin, we create. It is a gift worth sharing.

Backstage for rehearsals with artist /activist Chris Thorne who played the role of Taungerung elder Baalwick in the play.