TALK OF THE NORTH: Busy job as novels take centre stage

In his latest Talk of the North, Ando discusses Mary Vernon’s 236 book mission, Professor Colin Roderick, the health of Indigenous communities and the passing of a Palm Island identity.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following story contains images of a person who has died.

IT’S not hard to guess what Magnetic Island resident Mary Vernon is doing over the Christmas-New Year period.

She’s reading books. And, no, she is not lying in a hammock flicking through airport potboilers, skipping the boring parts while sipping a G&T that is more G than T.

She is in fact ploughing her way through the 236 books entered in this year’s Townsville-based Margaret and Colin Roderick Award for Australian Literature. When Mary joined the four person judging panel nine years ago there were around 100 books that had to be reviewed.

TOTN Literary judge Mary Vernon has a lot of reading to do

We can only assume from the rise in numbers that people weren’t sitting at home baking bread, learning to knit or even making babies during Covid lockdowns, as has been often suggested. No, they were writing the Great Australian Novel.

So, how does a judge find the time to read all of these books? Mary told me she can read while doing just about anything, even cooking. “You can read and stir at the same time,” she said.

And she has even developed a special category for the ones that don’t come close to making the cut. Channelling Pink Floyd, it’s called the Another Dent In The Wall, which is what happens when she launches the unreadable ones into space. The winner will be announced at a special dinner most likely in August/September.

Professor Colin Roderick with his book on Henry Lawson. Picture: Lori/Neilsen

IN CASE you didn’t know, pith-helmet wearing Professor Colin Roderick was an Australian academic and the inaugural Professor of English at James Cook University. He was an expert on Australian literary giants such as Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and Miles Franklin. He had a special interest in the writing of Waltzing Matilda, believing always that Hoffmeister (the swaggie in the song who “stole” the sheep) was murdered in cold blood because he was a hardline unionist. This gels with a wider belief that Banjo Paterson, who penned the song, was on the side of the squatters and wrote the suicide version (jumped into a billabong) as part of a wider cover-up of the murder. It’s one of our great Aussie mysteries.

Professor Colin Roderick

THERE will be those who roll their eyes when I say the Bjelke-Petersen government paid more attention to the welfare of people living on Queensland’s remote Indigenous communities than the state’s current Labor government. Sure, Joh was ultra-paternalistic, but this is why if Covid had happened back in the 1980s, vaccinations would have been a priority out on the communities. The current state government put road blocks across the Peninsula Development Rd south of Laura in 2020 to stop Covid being transported hell west and crooked up Cape York Peninsula by tourists and other travellers. Ergo, this led us to naively assume the state had health professionals vaccinating the most vulnerable people in our remotest communities. It was a no-brainer. There is a saying in journalism to “never assume anything”.

Former Qld Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen at Heritage/Hotel, Bris 07 Jul 1995 Headshot alone

But, sometimes something appears so logical that you fall into the trap of assuming without questioning if it is right. I’m afraid that this is what a lot of us did with the state government and Queensland’s 47 Indigenous communities: we assumed the government had teams in there doing the vaccinations. We assumed wrong.

THIS is what I wrote in this column in October last year: “The state government has slammed the panic button as we speak. Gordon Tallis has been brought in to sound the alarm on Indigenous communities. The fact there wasn’t an active, ongoing program to promote vaccinations in our rural and Indigenous communities last year is a disgrace. Government figures from October 10 reveal a vaccination rate of 29 per cent on Palm Island and 19 per cent at Yarrabah south of Cairns.

Indigenous role models like Jonathan Thurston, Matt Bowen, Jessica Mauboy, Deborah Mailman and Mal Meninga could have been brought in to promote the cause. The fact there wasn’t an active, ongoing program to promote vaccinations in our rural and Indigenous communities last year (2020) is a disgrace.” Now, communities like Kowanyama, Pormpuraaw, Wujal, Lockhart River, Hope Vale, Doomadgee and the Torres Strait Islands must be on tenterhooks.

SAD to hear of the death of Jacob Baira just before Christmas. Jacob was one of the old time “hard” men of Palm Island. In the early 1980s when I was working for the Queensland Country Life newspaper, the chief-of-staff in Brisbane phoned to say he’d booked me a flight to Palm to write a story about the island’s cattle enterprise and intensive piggery and its black lip oyster farm.

Jacob Baira former Councillor for Palm Island. Picture: Fiona Harding

Yes, there used to be all of these things happening over at Palm. Jacob was the mayor and I had made an appointment to speak with him about the strides the island was taking in its endeavour to develop primary industries.

We set a time at his office for midmorning. He was a huge bloke, physically imposing and as fit as a Herbert River scrubber. He kept me waiting for four hours and when he did wave me into his office he made it clear that he didn’t have much time for Europeans.

He had hands as big as shovel blades and would look at you as though he was going to use them to rip your head from your shoulders. He had been raised under the iron hand of Queensland’s then ultra-paternalistic head of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs, Paddy Killoran. Jacob carried that load of resentment on his shoulders for years.

I shouldn’t complain about the length of time he kept me waiting. There was a young English doctor there the same time as me from the World Health Organisation. It was his third day out in the waiting room.

Jacob Baira outside his home on Palm Island. Pic Evan Morgan

He sighed when I expressed my surprise at his patience and told me he was used to it because he worked mostly in Africa where it was common for white doctors to be kept waiting by black politicians. Jacob mellowed over the years and we became pretty good friends in the sense that he would always ring me if there was something happening on Palm he felt I should know about.

And he was one of those wise, old heads who was a tower of strength after the 2004 riot following the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee. Sad to know he has passed on. And gone from Palm as well are the pigs, cattle and oysters, but that’s another story.

Originally published as TALK OF THE NORTH: Busy job as novels take centre stage