Leading the way to reconciliation

Andrew Mathieson
HISTORY could argue that escaped convict William Buckley might have, albeit unwittingly, started the reconciliation process before its time in Australia.
Spending all but three months of his first 32 years in Australia with Geelong’s Wathaurong tribe, Buckley accepted their ways – and for good reason.
The 23-year-old Englishman cut loose a boat one evening from a Sorrento colonial settlement and escaped across Port Phillip Bay toward the Bellarine Peninsula.
There he was reported to have fished for food with the locals, adopted their language and dressed in kangaroo skins.
More than 200 years later and one of the Geelong’s leading Aboriginal visionaries continues the fight for the same acceptance.
Trevor Edwards, the man behind the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative, believes his people’s willingness to share still rings true.
“But Buckley may been forced to do so,” Trevor chuckles.
“I would assume if he valued his life, and wanted to continue to live, he needed to obey their ways, traditions and customs.
“You would have to say now he was embracing and accepting of the mob.”
The humble beginnings of Geelong’s first Aboriginal co-operative, a social network for all indigenous communities, were typical of the Wathaurong ways.
Support initially came in the shape of a couple local pollies sharing their office space, extending to offering a spare desk and a clunky typewriter.
In the true sense of self-determination, the co-operative later sold raffle tickets just to pay their first rent.
“It was quite ironic that we were renting from the waterside workers and they bought most of the tickets,” Trevor acknowledges.
As a child, the “happiest times” were on the Framlingham Aboriginal mission outside Warrnambool.
A carefree Trevor recalls enjoying getting a dink on a milk carton the couple of miles to school.
However, at just seven, he first encountered racism after the family moved a few towns further west to Woolsthorpe.
“We were quickly labelled the local half-castes,” he tells.
“The one thing it did do was it taught us to be tough and stand up for our rights.
“I also became one of the better fighters in the school, so I soon had plenty of friends.”
A few generations later, things at school couldn’t have been more different.
On behalf of the Wathaurong people, he was invited to speak at an open forum at St Joseph’s College.
The warm atmosphere as he walked into the assembly hall changed his perception of reconciliation.
Trevor was overwhelmed.
“In terms of that experience that I had when I look back at it now, it was tremendously moving experience,” he recalls.
“There was 1200 young people who, innocently, might not have been quite educated in the whole process to an extent but was certainly led by policies of the school council, teachers, and parents.
“There was a real willingness and I found that so impacting that it was difficult for me to speak and grasp the reception I got.”
Now 62, Trevor reckons he’s slowing down.
But the elder of Gunditjmara and Wathaurong descent is still the longest serving state director on the Aboriginal housing board after some 27 years.
There was a time Trevor was also the founding chairman of a youth race relations camp at Lake Eildon, while taking over the presidency of a struggling East Belmont Football Club that followed his stints as both senior and reserves coach.
“No wonder back then we didn’t win a game,” he laughs, “I didn’t have any time to develop my coaching skills.”