The troubled island, off the Queensland coast near Townsville, started life as a penal colony for dozens of different Aboriginal groups a century ago. Is it still a purgatory for its people in a paradise-like environment? Keith McEwan tried to visit to see for himself...

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THE BELLS ARE TOLLING ON PALM ISLAND

By Keith McEwan

It was shortly after we adopted an orphanage-bound, Aboriginal baby in 1961 that I first learnt about the plight of those living on Palm Island, a location far removed from suburban Melbourne where our family lived. This came about when I read a booklet (which I still have in my possession) “The Struggle For Dignity ” published by the Council for Aboriginal Rights (Vic.) 1962.

In explaining the harsh and arbitrary treatment inflicted on those sent to this penal settlement off the coast of Queensland, near Townsville, a woman confined there in 1956, stated: “Mail had to be smuggled out of the settlement otherwise if we post letters through the office on Palm Island they are opened up and destroyed and we are called up before the Superintendent and severely punished. We are put in gaol and only given two blankets and fed with bread and water for a week.” 

Women were enclosed by wire-netting in a dormitory and when they went out to work, or to collect their pay, they were escorted by the Native police. Life was very tough for women, both the young and old. They were locked up at 6pm and allowed no entertainment. Girls who escaped were given six weeks in gaol, their hair was shaved and they were given a bag dress to wear.

Expectant mothers visiting Townsville Hospital for medical attention were placed in the Townsville gaol while awaiting admission to the hospital.

Over the years since then, along with too few others, I have been hearing the bells on Palm Island tolling  – often faintly and intermittently, but on one occasion, more loudly, when it was widely reported that this naturally beautiful island, the home to Indigenous Australians drawn, over generations, from 50 Queensland tribes, was the most lawless place on earth.

Then the bells tolled once again when Mulrunji Doomadgee was killed in a police cell on 19 November 2004 on Palm Island and riots took place there after the autopsy on the cause of his death was read out to a public meeting. At this time all Australia knew that Palm Island was in crisis.

While living far way in Central Victoria, due mainly to articles in The Australian by Tony Koch I have been able to gain an insight into the failings and bias of the law-enforcement agencies in Queensland.  It was only after public outrage that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was charged with killing his Aboriginal prisoner (this being the  first prosecution in the long history of Aboriginal deaths in custody – Sgt Hurley was acquitted, but coronial inquests and inquiries have continued until mid-2010, and look certain to keep going).

Recent books, such as The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper and Palm Island Through a Long Lens by Joanne Watson, provide an insight into the tragic death of Mulrunji Doomadgee and an understanding of the hellish life experienced by the indigenous people forcibly sent to this island from the reserves and missions, since its formation in 1918 as a detention centre and a punishment reserve.

Sent there for committing trivial and fabricated offences or speaking up for basic human rights, they were labelled “incorrigible”, “dangerous”, “destitute” and even “communist”. Many would remain separated from their families and communities for the rest of their lives.

When, in April 2010, I mentioned to people in Townsville that I intended to visit Palm Island, their faces went blank and words failed them. The young girls at the ferry booking office looked surprised at my request for such information and had difficulty finding it.  From their reaction it seems that most of the people they were dealing with were travelling to Magnetic Island, a popular close-by holiday destination.

The ferry car-parking attendant I talked to indicated that perhaps he should visit Palm Island to see for himself as he had heard that the scenery was very beautiful but added that when the young men from there came over to Townsville they caused trouble.

When I questioned why this might be he muttered it was “political” and left it at that.

I was then surprised to learn that the ferry to Palm Island went only on certain days and after completing the only journey of two hours on a given day, it returned that same day, 10 minutes after arriving, leaving no time for visitors to look around unless they were prepared to stay overnight.

Moreover, I was told by the ferry booking staff that the only hotel on the island did not offer overnight accommodation. Air travel to Palm offered a better service but the cost for the 70-kilometre flight was prohibitive.

As there were so few shops and services on the Island, most residents would need to travel to Townsville for many of the commodities and requirements they sought.  I could not ascertain what affordable overnight accommodation was available to them in Townsville and wondered if they stayed with friends or relatives while there.

Realising that a journey to Palm Island was out of the question due to budget restraints, I set out in my very short stay to speak to likely informed people in Townsville about present-day life for the people living on this troubled Island.

Calling on a senior welfare officer in Townsville, who visits Palm Island regularly, I was told that over 90% of the adult population there were unemployed. He explained that while considerable funds went to this Island in welfare payments for the 4,000 residents, there was an absence of retail and commercial outlets for goods and services to be purchased, apart from a general store and one or two shops.

In his opinion, this restriction resulted in many dispirited people spending money on grog, resulting in alarming levels of domestic violence, assaults and theft.

When I raised the issue of racism, my informant then stated that he had worked for UN agencies in third-world countries emerging from colonialism and found Australia a very racist country with racist ill-feeling for the Indigenous people deep-seated in Townsville.

His comments did not surprise me as I was aware the trial of Lex Wotton and other Palm Island Aborigines accused of rioting was moved from Townsville to Brisbane after a survey, commissioned by Mr Wotton`s legal team, found that less than 5 per cent of the city`s residents had a positive attitude towards Palm Island`s Aboriginal residents. 

Having no other contacts in Townsville, I was fortunate to meet an Aboriginal maintenance worker on the Strand foreshore – with its most attractive clusters of palm trees spread over  three kilometres along the sea-front.

When I mentioned to this man that I intended to visit Palm Island, if I could, he told me that his mother was taken there from her home in Northern Queensland when she was a child 50-odd years ago. She was never to see her family again.(As Joanne Watson explains in her book, this was a common experience).

When I enquired about racism in Townsville, the young man told me that he was being racially abused by a co-worker and had notified his supervisor of this harassment.

Later that day, while walking in the city centre, I passed by many Indigenous people at the bus terminal and was struck by the manner in which they stood silently or walked around, mostly alone, with expressionless faces. They showed little animation and were not conversing with each other.

As I walked slowly past them I recalled some lines from Henry Lawson`s poem, Faces in the Street : “Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet…While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.”

It seems that little has changed since C.D. Rowley`s meritorious study of Aboriginal Australia, published in three books by Penguin in 1972, compared the ongoing development of Townsville with the stagnation of Palm Island. Rowley saw the latter as an island gaol, belonging to the frontier`s past.  And it seems to me that as long as populist governments continue to be elected, the future for Indigenous Australians living on this island does indeed look bleak.

I regret to say that this 84-year-old pensioner, with his walking stick, never made it to Palm Island.

However I left Townsville determined to discover how the courageous Indigenous people of Palm Island with their unquenchable spirit, can set about overcoming decades of trauma and transform a purpose-built penal settlement into a stable community of socially engaged people, gainfully employed and with health, education and other facilities available to all,  as it is on the mainland.

For this to happen, as Joanne Watson has stated in the conclusion of her book, “Generosity , compassion and assistance are required…Palm Island was once our Alcatraz; today it is a litmus test of our “progress””.

– Keith McEwan, May 2010

Footnote: Due to our caring daughter, Dawn, taking leave from her work in Canberra for a week in mid-April, I was offered respite from my daily visits to my wife, June, who is residing in a residential care facility. I chose to try to investigate Palm Island for myself.

(Keith is a member of CLA)

Palm Island Through a Long Lens, Joanne Watson, 9780855757038, Aboriginal Studies Press, March 2010, 256pp, paperback, $34.95;
The Tall Man - Chloe Hooper, ISBN-13: 9780143010661  paperback 288pp Penguin Australia Sept 2009 $24.95