Outbreak of peace

By Hec Kavanagh

PORT LINCOLN — Queued up waiting to get into the Yothu Yindi concert at Centennial Oval on January 23 there were so many cops around you might have expected a convoy of uranium trucks to come roaring down New West Road headed for Brennan's Jetty, or the outbreak of peace.

The fire brigade was parked on the servo apron opposite. St Johns and the Orange people from the rescue volunteers were there. Security toughs were frisking the queue, confiscating water.

Maybe half the people in the queue would have been from the Nunga communities. Television cameras photographed and photographed our mongrelising blue-eyed mayor while waiting in the chill evening for the Big Story, the Big Blue — which never broke.

"Yothu Yindi" translates as mother and child. The lead singer is a teacher. The local Nunga high school band finished their warm-up bracket with the Pink Floyd standard, "One More Brick in the Wall". This time around the kids loved their teacher, the simple messages of the album songs, the glimpse of cultural richness in the traditional dances. Everybody there loved this ceremonial under the big moon and pale stars. "Stand up for your rights." "Lift him up, lift your game." "Terra nullius is dead and gone". "Mother land." "The law." Loved the colour, energy, the presentation.

A couple of grey-haired women with walking sticks went burrowing past me through the mob to be up front with the kids. Before it was over they came hobbling back, ecstatic. "Roxy! It's been a long time." A gardener, she has mothered a high school dux, lawyers, activists, produced the perpetual ritual chook for party raffles. Roxy said, "I'm so happy. This is so beautiful. But my legs give out."

Local television news next night showed the mayor groaning on about his theory of "mono-culturalism" and then a creased-faced presenter saying how most of white Port Lincoln stayed away because they feared to be with the Nungas in the wired-in stadium which has been where the local Nunga footfall team, Mallee Park, has dished out humiliation to the district whites over four successive premierships.

Eat your heart out all you tuna-flinging, four-wheel-drive, tug-of-war, keg-rolling tremulous whites who stayed at home in front of your action videos. Yothu Yindi was a doozey.

From GLW issue 263