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Passport to Nowhere

By Geoff Clark - posted Friday, 15 February 2002


First I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this country on whose land we stand. It is appropriate that the Melbourne Cricket Ground – a significant site for so many cricket-loving Australians – is the venue for launching Bernard Whimpress’ book, Passport to Nowhere – Aborigines in Australian Cricket 1850 – 1939.

It was here on Boxing Day 1866 that an Aboriginal team from Victoria’s Western Districts held a match against the Melbourne Cricket Club in front of a crowd of 8000 people. This game laid the groundwork for the Western Districts’ historic 1868 visit to England which saw Aborigines become the first ever Australian team to play cricket at its birth place.

It is a great source of personal pride that the team came from around my area, the Framlingham Aboriginal Community. Two of the team members, Dick A Dick, and John Cuzens, are buried in the same cemetery as some of my relations - grandfathers, uncles and aunties.

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Despite the historic achievement of the cricketers many people in this country are still unaware it happened. It took 99 years before a book Cricket Walkabout was issued to mark the centenary of the event. It is only now that the tour is being brought to the attention of a mass audience in a television advertising campaign. One thing a glossy advertising campaign won’t tell you, however, is how difficult were the circumstances they faced – in all aspects of life, not just cricket.

White laws stripped them of virtually any control over their own lives. Endemic racism blocked or destroyed their careers. Disease, poverty, dispossession and crime decimated their numbers. For the 1868 team there were no ticker tape parades or lucrative contracts. They returned to obscurity and early deaths.

Bernard Whimpress’ book Passport to Nowhere does an excellent job of placing the achievements and setbacks of our cricketers into the context of the times. Bernard, the Curator of the Adelaide Oval Museum and sports historian, has also done a great job of tracking down new facts and statistical data about our cricketing heritage.

The cricketers’ stories are woven into the realities of their peoples lives: the murders, the diseases, the overt racism. The Protection era policies controlling every aspect of their lives. He reminds us that the 1868 tour by the Western Districts team was only some 25 years after whites first moved into their homelands and shot or poisoned about one-tenth of the population.

And how only one year after the team’s return Victoria’s Aboriginal Protection Act forced the majority onto reserves or into obscurity.

Only one team member, Johnny Mullagh, dubbed "the W.G. Grace of Aboriginal cricketers" was known to have escaped the reserves and sustained a cricketing career for 25 years. Mullagh was the top scorer on the 1868 tour with an average of 23.6 runs and the top wicket taker, 245, at an average of 10. He took five wickets in an innings 21 times.

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Yet despite his status as the best batsman in Victoria he was given only one opportunity to represent his state. Playing for Victoria against England he top scored with 36.

Mullagh died alone but unlike other Aboriginal icons in the book his legacy is still strong more than 100 years late in the western Victorian town of Harrow where he was based. His memorial overlooks the Glenelg River and the 1991 centenary of his death was marked by a pilgrimage to his grave by 60 (non-Indigenous) people.

Other featured Aboriginal cricketers, Queensland’s Eddie Gilbert, and NSW’s Jack Marsh suffered fates with eerie parallels to modern controversies involving black cricketers, albeit from overseas.

Marsh, who played at the end of the 19th Century into 1905, was rated by some as the world’s best bowler and led the national bowling averages in his first season with NSW. But at key points in his career -- on the eve of selection as a state representative and later as a strong contender for national selection -- he was controversially "no-balled" by two umpires for alleged throwing or "chucking".

The decisions restricted his first-class appearances for NSW to only six and prevented his becoming the Australian team’s first Aboriginal cricketer despite widespread public outcries.

According to the book the details of these incidents also call for some reassessments of some of Australia’s revered cricket figures including Australian test player and selector, Monty Noble, and umpire Bob Crockett.

Marsh fell into alcoholism and was later bashed to death, aged 42, at an Orange hotel. The two men charged with his manslaughter walked free.

As recently highlighted in a national magazine, Gilbert’s career, also suffered from being "called" for chucking at crucial times; firstly by the media and then umpire Andrew Barlow. Despite his being "no-balled" Gilbert managed nearly two dozen first class appearances for Queensland but the ruling denied him his best chance of playing for Australia, in a Test against South Africa.

The book unequivocally links these decisions to racial prejudice and discrimination.

But Bernard also points out that the No-Ball Law allows a bowler to be "called" if he only appears to be throwing which is "contradictory to the traditions of British justice and the presumption of innocence". He argues the law was flawed in 1900 and "remains so nearly a century later in the wake of the ‘calling’ of Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan by umpires…which effectively damned the bowler as a cheat".

No doubt an updated version of the book would make reference to the recent plight of Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar during his Australian tour.

While noting the history of Aboriginal achievement in sport is still in its infancy, Bernard has produced the most comprehensive coverage yet of my people’s involvement in one of Australia’s greatest games. He gives new insights into the development of Aboriginal involvement in cricket and challenges modern-day assumptions that the game had a widespread impact in Aboriginal society.

Bernard also debunks the conventional historical view that cricket was popular among Aborigines and racial discrimination caused its demise. Discrimination was a key factor in the decline of Aboriginal involvement in cricket but its not the full story.

As he says in the book: "The history is more complex that the tale of a handful of throwers or the sad deaths of four first-class players due to drunkeness, disease…and a hotel brawl."

The book shows that the essence of Aboriginal involvement in cricket was discontinuity -- a stop-start affair which often began with Aboriginal accommodation to white ways and ceased because of a disinclination to play. It traces the origins of Aboriginal involvement in cricket as a "civilising influence" at the Poonindie Mission in South Australia in the 1850s up until the early 20th Century tragedies of Marsh and Gilbert.

It also shows that the "promising beginnings" of our involvement in cricket were forged not just by missions but also pastoral stations and in some cases, by Aboriginals themselves.

It also clearly demonstrates that success on the field and white claims for cricket as a civilising influence did not translate into land grants, economic independence or Aboriginal control over their own lives.

Studies of any aspect of Aboriginal life during the past 212 years are necessarily bleak as evidenced by the book’s title. As Bernard points out in the book’s introduction the story of Aboriginals in cricket, indeed Aboriginal involvement with white society generally, is one of "spirited adaptations under adversity".

And certainly the story of Aboriginals in sport in more modern times is one of great hope and inspiration. We have been world champions in tennis, boxing and paralympics.

Aboriginals are playing top level Australian Rules and rugby codes in record numbers and there are extended family networks and other linkages in these sports yet to be found in cricket. We are developing future champions in waiting in virtually all sports including swimming. And for those of us who love cricket there is also increasing optimism.

As Bernard said on ABC radio last week the South Australian Cricket Association and Aboriginal groups are working on programs to promote Indigenous involvement. Aboriginal players in South Australia have been in state squads in recent years and are "pushing at the door".

The Australian Cricket Board said last month it had been making a concerted effort to "sell" cricket to our people during the past three years, particularly in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This has led to a steady flow of talent into the NT youth squad.

As chairman of ATSIC I am also attempting to persuade Prime Minister John Howard to support a regular contest between the PM’s XI and an Aboriginal XI, beginning with next year’s Centenary of Federation celebrations.

Since I revealed my intention in the media we have already been given a boost by Jason Gillespie’s public confirmation that he is the first Aboriginal to play for the Australian team.

I am hoping that with the support of our best-known cricket fan, Mr Howard, the tragedies of our past will begin to be offset by the dawning of a new era for all Australians -- both on and off the field.

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This is a transcript of a speech launching Bernard Whimpress' Book Passport to Nowhere which can be bought from Walla Walla Press in Sydney.



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About the Author

Geoff Clark is a former Chair of ATSIC.

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