Making Mabo

TWENTY years on, t he personal story of Eddie Mabo's battle to reclaim title to his ancestral land is as powerful as ever.

Mabo family

HE just couldn't get her out of his mind, the girl with the crisp floral skirt, sweet smile and gleaming chocolate eyes. So now, emboldened by Dutch courage, he re-enters the sweltering church hall where he'd spotted her earlier, where a wedding feast is now under way.

He asks to be introduced and, as the ceiling fans drone overhead, small talk and laughs are exchanged. He offers to walk her home but a small bottle of rum slips to the floor from under his shirt. He is swiftly ushered out of the hall.

It's the summer of 1957 in north Queensland and a 21-year-old Torres Strait islander called Eddie Koiki Mabo - whose name will become synonymous with indigenous land rights in Australia - has just shared his first conversation with the 17-year-old girl he will spend the rest of his life with, and who will be the mother of his 10 children. For it is this woman, Bonita Netta Nehow, who will be the steadying force behind this unlikely crusader's life during its devastating lows and heroic highs. Such as the time in the 1960s when Eddie will sit for hours in a whites-only bar, brandishing a sign demanding his right to be served. The triumphant day when, with Bonita at his side, he'll open the first black school in Townsville for indigenous kids to learn about their culture. The shameful episode when the white authorities on Murray Island in the Torres Strait, Eddie's beloved birthplace, will cruelly deny him entry to visit his dying father. The defining moment in 1974 when, as a gardener at James Cook University in Townsville, he is shocked to learn that his ancestral lands do not belong to his people, that they're owned by the Crown. "No way, it's not theirs, it's ours," he declares. The dramatic afternoon in 1981 when, at a land rights conference, he presents a rousing speech spelling out the traditional land inheritance system in the Torres Strait islands, inspiring a lawyer to launch a test case against the Queensland government.

Bonita will be his rock throughout the 10 long years of agonising frustration that follow - the key battle of Eddie Mabo's life. For what begins as a personal mission to have his ancestral lands recognised becomes a High Court challenge to overcome a historical legal wrong applying to indigenous people right across Australia. But then fate denies Eddie his sweetest, most powerful moment of all. Riddled with cancer, he dies in January 1992 at the age of 55, five months before the High Court of Australia overturns the 200-year-old doctrine of terra nullius that had deemed Australia an empty continent, the legal justification for the British seizing indigenous lands. That momentous decision on June 3, 1992 - 20 years ago this weekend - represents the biggest change to land ownership in Australia's white history. Eddie is posthumously granted an Australian Human Rights Medal, but the Mabo decision becomes a flashpoint in court rooms, state parliaments and talkback radio across the nation. Eddie's grave in Townsville is desecrated, spray-painted with swastikas and the word "Abo", so his body is exhumed and reburied on Murray Island, the land he loved and fought so hard for. He is given a special burial ceremony reserved only for a king.

If this extraordinary real-life story doesn't cry out for a feature-length film treatment, then what does? Which explains why we're in a rundown church hall in Townsville in mid-summer, on the film set for the telemovie Mabo, and Bonita "Netta" Mabo, now an old lady, is watching a youthful version of herself played by Deborah Mailman (Offspring, The Secret Life Of Us) striking up that first awkward conversation with Eddie Mabo, played by Jimi Bani (RAN, The Straits) at the wedding function. Bonita is also watching her real-life daughter, Gail, play the woman who introduces the two lovebirds to one another, while her younger daughter, Celuia, sits at a wedding table opposite, pretending to eat, drink and chat. Talk about art imitating real life. The telemovie, which also stars Colin Friels and Miranda Otto playing lawyers and judges, will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on Thursday, and will air on ABC1 next Sunday night.

There is a poignant sweetness to seeing Eddie Mabo's 72-year-old widow, a bird-like woman with steel-wool grey hair and twinkly eyes, watching her life with Eddie being faithfully rewound in front of her. A frequent guest on the set, who also pops up in a cameo, Bonita confesses she'd had a "little cry" the evening before while watching rushes from a scene in which Eddie stages his lonely vigil in a racially segregated pub. She recalls the big moments in Eddie's life ("land rights was something he just had to do for his people") but also the smaller ones, such as his fondness for waltzing with her around their cramped kitchen. Memories such as this fed directly into the richly layered script by Sue Smith (Bastard Boys, Brides of Christ), who spent countless hours interviewing the extended Mabo clan, who have given this film (a co-production between the ABC and Blackfella Films) their blessing.

It's clear that Mailman, who spent time with Bonita at her Townsville home before the shoot, has bonded with the Mabo matriarch over their shared indigenous upbringing in Queensland: Mailman, 39, grew up in Mt Isa and Bonita in Halifax, north of Townsville. (Bonita's parents came from Tanna island in Vanuatu, forcibly removed from their homes to work in the Queensland cane fields.) Mailman confides, in hushed tones, that "this role has scared me more than anything I've done before". We're sitting on the lawn behind the church house between takes. "This is the first time I've played a character based on a real person, and here I am playing one of the most well-loved women in the indigenous community," she says, dragging on a cigarette.

For any actor there is the inevitable pressure to make a character authentic but Mailman appears touchingly anxious to capture the essence of the real-life Bonita. "She's so strong, but she also has this dry sense of humour about some of the experiences in her life," the actress observes. "She'll tell you about the time when she was heavily pregnant and was cycling to the local prawn factory, putting in a shift between 10pm and 6am, returning home for an hour or two's kip before she was up again preparing the kids' breakfast."

Spend time chatting with members of the Mabo clan about the man they call Koiki (only whitefellas called him Eddie) and you're struck by how testing - and yet emotionally full - Mabo's life must have been. To underpin the authenticity of their project, director Rachel Perkins and producers Darren Dale and Miranda Dear - whose company, Blackfella Films, was responsible for the award-winning documentary First Australians, one of the top-selling DVDs of the past two years, and most recently The Tall Man, about a death in custody on Palm Island - invited several members of the Mabo family to appear in walk-on roles. (Bonita gave birth to seven kids and adopted three, so there were plenty to choose from.) There was no attempt to gloss over Eddie Mabo's personal flaws, so it's all there - the domestic quarrels, a short separation, battles to make ends meet.

All of which does nothing to detract from the story's epic scale. "This is the classic David and Goliath struggle," reflects Perkins, the daughter of late Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins. "I grew up in an activist family, so I know a little about how much personal sacrifice can go into a struggle." She and Dale also used the actual locations where Eddie Mabo grew up and spent his adult life. "It would have been easier to shoot this on the Gold Coast, but we didn't," she jokes.

If there's an edge to Perkins' laugh, it's for a good reason. Shooting had to be halted on Murray Island - a dot on the map between Cape York and the southern coast of Papua New Guinea, and known by Torres Strait Islanders as Mer - when the ABC crew was at the receiving end of some abuse from locals. The nature of the strife they encountered (more on this later) was a sad reminder that although Eddie Mabo won a great victory for his people, resentment continues to brew.

TO wind back the stress during his 10-year battle with the Australian legal system, Eddie Mabo would paint watercolours of his birthplace, Murray Island, which he regarded as his spiritual homeland even if he raised his family in Townsville and spent little of his adult life there. Eddie "Koiki" Sambo was born on the island in 1936, but his mother died when he was an infant, leaving him to be raised by his uncle, Benny Mabo. Eddie attended a missionary school, which the Queensland government had established on Murray Island shortly after annexing the Torres Strait islands in 1897. Raised a Christian, he was descended from a long line of fierce warriors and skilled mariners, the Meriam people.

When he was 19, Eddie was exiled from his home because of an alleged act of civil disobedience - he was accused of being drunk with a young woman and, after refusing to accept unpaid labour as punishment, he departed for the mainland. After landing a job working on the railways in western Queensland, he set about encouraging other Torres Strait Islanders to join the trade union. But it was a gardening job at James Cook University, where he attended seminars, read books and befriended members of the lecturing staff, that had a profound impact on his thinking. He was having lunch one day in 1974 with historians Professor Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds, and regaling them with stories of his land back on Murray, when they reluctantly informed him that it was actually owned by the Crown. In 1982, he launched his first legal action in the High Court on behalf of himself, David and Sam Passi and James Rice - all Meriam people from the Torres Strait - to prove their legal right to land on the islands of Mer (Murray), Dauar and Waier.

Mabo had his first big victory (some refer to it as Mabo 1) in 1988, when the High Court of Australia found that the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, which the Bjelke-Petersen government had introduced in 1985 to retrospectively abolish native title rights, was not constitutional. But Justice Moynihan later handed down a ruling stating that Eddie wasn't the rightful heir to his lands because he wasn't really a Mabo, having changed his name.

"That decision really devastated Dad," recalls Gail Mabo, who still lives in the Mabo family home in Townsville. "He had tears in his eyes and told us, 'They're trying to discredit me'. For the first time in his life he felt like giving up. You know, he had this dream to have his own fishing boat. If he'd made that his life's aim instead of land rights, his life would have been much easier for him and he probably would have lived much longer."

WHILE Murray Island still boasts the tropical beauty of Eddie Mabo's youth, there is no tip-toeing around the social problems festering among the 400-strong community today. Those troubles bubbled up during filming: two young men under the influence of alcohol broke a windscreen and punctured a hole in the bonnet of a council car hired by the ABC crew, and another vehicle was dinged.

"It was a great embarrassment to me," says Charles Passi, who plays Benny Mabo in the film and is the son of Dave Passi, a Murray Island co-complainant with Eddie Mabo in the High Court challenge. "One of my own nephews came into a house where ABC crew were staying and threatened them. He's a good fellow when he is sober. But this is the problem on Murray: there is a state of lawlessness. It's beset with the same kinds of problems that are affecting other remote indigenous communities across Australia. We have high rates of sexual abuse and violence and children who are not safe in their homes."

What's lacking in remote indigenous communities is moral leadership, insists Passi. "The hard work has been done in terms of the recognition of our land rights. But this is a time when we need real leadership in our communities, and there is no longer any respect for elders or those in authority. You can't control these young men because they have no fear. It didn't happen in my time because I feared what my older cousins and elders would do if I got into trouble".

While Passi has no desire to see a return to white men lording it over indigenous communities - Murray Island is now governed by a community council, which is responsible for roads, water and housing, and land boundaries are based on traditional laws of occupation - serious social problems are not being addressed, he says. "If you have a sore you have to deal with it; pretending it doesn't exist only allows it to fester. We have to admit that many of the faults are self-created, and take responsibility for our actions." Does he believe that Eddie Mabo's legacy has to some extent been lost among the locals? "No, he's still a hero on Murray, but it's a pity his example - respecting where he came from and fighting for a better deal for his people - isn't being followed better. Eddie didn't take the easy road - his life wasn't made any easier by the struggles he took on."

Indeed, Gail Mabo recalls her father and the family receiving death threats while she was growing up. "We'd get these extremist phone calls and Dad wouldn't let us answer the phone," says the 47-year-old. "It used to panic him at times, and he'd rush us all inside, but it never seemed to reduce his determination." Eddie Mabo's eldest son, Eddie Jr, who appears in a May Day march scene in the film, echoes the sentiment. "Funnily enough, the more agitated and heated Dad became, the more articulate and focused he became - the opposite of most people," recalls the 51-year-old. "It seemed to bring out the best aspects of his mind."

An army of casting agents couldn't have found a better actor than Jimi Bani to play Eddie Mabo. A Torres Strait Islander with a grandfather who was a tribal chief, he has already received accolades for his roles in the mini-series RAN, on SBS, and The Straits, which recently aired on ABC-TV. He's about to appear in another mini-series by Blackfella Films, Redfern Now, and has been described as the actor to watch in 2012.

Bani fell into acting in 2006, when he did a screen test - with no experience - for RAN, which was being shot around Townsville, where he lived at the time. "I discovered I loved jumping into someone else's shoes and sharing their story," he says. Inspired to get formal training, he moved his young family to Perth so he could study at the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts, but returned to Townsville where he was picked up by the ABC to play a lead role in The Straits.

Gail Mabo remembers meeting Bani during the production of RAN and thinking he'd be the perfect actor to play her father. "I went for the first reading of the script with both Jim and Deborah, and it was a very emotional journey, and at the end of it all we all cried."

Bani considers this his most important role to date. "Being a Torres Strait Islander myself, and telling a story about a man who is an icon for our people, well you can't get much better than that," he enthuses. "It's important to teach our kids to have respect for their history, their language, their land. Getting our land rights recognised was the first big stumbling block to be overcome on our path to being recognised as equals."

Even if it fundamentally altered the way we see land ownership in Australia, the Mabo ruling could never hope to be faultless or legally watertight. Amendments to native title legislation during the Howard government years and recent challenges from mining companies have seen some traditional land owners being effectively stripped of much of what Mabo promised. But there have also been some big native title wins, and at the very least Mabo has forced state governments and developers to negotiate with indigenous communities.

Bonita Mabo tells me that, on his death bed, her husband expressed his fervent wish that if the High Court finally granted native title a national holiday should be declared for all Australians. While the hoped-for holiday never eventuated, the tributes flowed in nonetheless. A year after his death, The Australian named Eddie Mabo its 1992 Australian of the Year, the first time it had conferred the honour posthumously.

And ultimately, this is the message of Mabo: reconciliation and respect for Australia's original owners. "The white man has always seen the land as something he possesses," observes Charles Passi. "But before time we saw the land as something we belonged to. That sense of belonging is very powerful to our culture."

It has to be said that indigenous-themed stories don't tend to notch up sky-high ratings on TV. When indigenous issues pop up on news programs such as Four Corners, audiences can drop by as many 200,000 viewers. But as a crafted drama about an inspirational life, Mabo represents the best form of creative risk.