EP09: Blended Token Cost - The Bill Beneath the Bill

SPS Audio is supported by advertising. Starting a new life in Australia isn't easy. Another of companies have rejected me. From top I feel like, oh, I'm going to quit. I've given up. Working progress is a podcast to help scale migrants, rebuild their careers in a new country. You'll hear inspiring real-life stories, expert advice and valuable tips to help you find a job and advance. Your career, working progress, listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Hey bro, what's your name? Where are you from? My name is Brock, I'm a proud Yalaner and Karkadun men, so my people come from Mount Isar. And we're sitting here at the back of the tribal warrior. We've got the full viewer Sydney City. Tell me about your role here on the boat, the tribal warrior, cultural cruisers. What do you do, bro? Yeah, so I'm the vessel coordinator. I make sure that oil act crews on the boat sort of give us a run sheet of what we're going to do for the day and I'm also in charge of the culture aspect. So as much as I'm not a gatigal man, I've been given the responsibility by gatigal elders to share their culture. The only way that their traditions are going to be carried on is if more people learn about it and more people share it. Some would say you've got one of the best jobs in the world, my brother. Look at this view. Yeah, there's no other office view like this one. How long have you been doing the cultural cruisers for, bro? I've been doing these for about two and a half years now. What do you love most about them? Sure, there's a lot to love. You know, the people who come aboard the cruise as well. The biggest thing I love about this job is the impact that we have on the community. So the money that we make from these ticket sales on the boat and goes back in the multiple programs within the Redfern community. Those being for men's health, women's health, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and youth programs. So as much as at the end of the day, I do take home a paycheck. I do also feel like I'm doing something that helps my people. We're cruising past Clark Island now, which you've taken the tourists on today. Tell us about Clark Island and the history there. Clark Island traditionally was a men's island. And the significance of it is this was the first place where our men seen these first fleet ships come in. So our men were on this island. The women were still on the mainland and our men had seen these ships. And obviously as the story goes, we didn't know what was happening. We hadn't seen these ships before. We hadn't seen white skin before. So our immediate reaction was these are the spirits then here to punish us for something we have done wrong. So our men quickly got onto their nowies, their canoes and rode back onto the mainland to let the women know to be weary and something's about to happen. Afterwards though, the name Clark Island comes from Lieutenant Ralph Clark who came over shortly after the first fleet. And he used this island to plant. So all sorts of food. Anything that's not native that you can think of, he tried to plant it here. So he tried to plant potatoes, bananas, you name it, he tried. But he quickly realized that anything that he planted here, he was not going to be able to harvest. Because this was also the first place where Aboriginal people and white people work together. The local Aboriginal people and the convicts had come to an agreement that we were going to steal all his crops before he could harvest them. So he quickly go up on this island. But that's where the name Clark Island comes from, Lieutenant Ralph Clark. Tell us about the crew's experience from where we start at Circular Key right through to us being at Clark Island and then departing Clark Island. What can people expect once they get on the boat? We pick you up from Circular Key and we take you on a little bit of a tour around the waterways and talk about some of the key sites that we're going past. And then we end up doing an island stop. It's not always Clark Island. We also have access to goat island. But at the moment there's a bit of works being done there. But goat island is actually the first island in the harbour to be given back to the Aboriginal people. So it was given back to the Aboriginal Land Council. I believe a little bit over two years ago now. And they're currently in the transition period of getting rid of all the white man-made structures. So that once we go to the island in the future, people aren't going to have to imagine what it once looked like, but they're actually going to see it. And what type of people do you get coming onto the cruise? Are they locals? Are they all tourists? How does that work, bro? All sorts of people. So we get people that are local to Sydney, people from all over Australia. But we are also big with tourism. So some of the cruise liners offer us a day experience when they come to Sydney. And to me it's very refreshing that people are coming here as tourists. And one of the first things they think about is learning about the Aboriginal culture here. So as much as there's a lot of people in Sydney that haven't heard this stuff, it's not also their fault. Like a lot of us have been taught from school that Aboriginal people are nothing more than hunter-gatherers. Unfortunately that's not the case, but it's been distilled in us for such a long time that people assume that. Some of the evidence that we show you on these tours literally proves that we were more than just hunter-gatherers. And tell us about Sydney Harbour traditionally. What was it used for by the local mob back in the day? Yeah, so a long time ago there was actually dry land and you could walk from Ireland to Ireland. So at low tide, everywhere was accessible by natural land bridge. While at high tide you'd have to swim or take your canoe over. But the way this harbour came about is a long time ago our people were playing up and they weren't looking after the land or each other the way they should have. So the spirits sent down this massive eel and that eel slapped its body down and created a flood. And that flood never went away and became the harbour. But the other island, goat island that we sometimes go to, the traditional name of that island is Memele. And the translation of that is "I of the eel" and it's said to be that that is where the head of that eel had landed. So we show you a lot of the history and the stories about this harbour and how it came about. It hasn't always been this way and chances are it's not always going to be this way. Chesslar is going to change in another 500 years time and it's not going to look like it does now. If we can educate people and share some of these stories, they're still going to remember what it once looked like. Here you go right in front of us to Manley Fasfery going past a very fast A/M mod. Yeah, yeah. Get a bit seasick on those vessels that's for sure. You must have seen all sorts of different things while working on the harbour. Yep, for example, a couple of weeks ago we were on the island and this is the first time this has ever happened to me in the two and a half years working here. But we were there with a lot of tourists come from overseas their first experience here and we had a school of dolphins actually come up and start showing off, jumping out of the water and they hung around that area for a good half an hour just showing off to these people. And that's something that you don't quite regularly get to see. You can even go on some of these dolphin watching tours on the harbour and not get to see that. So the fact that they come to our island which is relatively untouched land and got to walk around our island experience something like that was. And we're looking at the city hub of bridge and the opera house to our right from here at the back of the tribal worry of boat. What's a cultural significance for that area on which the opera house sits, bro? So the opera house was once a large ceremony site named Jabal Gully. And those ceremonies used to last days and nights on end. But later on they changed the name of that place to Benelong Point. So Benelong was quite an influential Aboriginal man. He was actually the first Aboriginal man to leave Australia. So he was captured by Captain Philip not long after they came here with the sole purpose of he wanted Benelong to be his communicator. He was under the impression that everyone in this area spoke one language, Aboriginal people were one people and that's it. He quickly learnt that wasn't the case and that there's hundreds of languages in New South Wales alone. So eventually Benelong did escape and he was eventually tracked down by Captain Philip again. And Captain Philip actually was one of the first people to accept cultural traditions as a white person. He acknowledged what he did was wrong the way he first came across Benelong and he accepted a spearing. So once he found Benelong, Benelong speed him in the arm and the automatic reaction from his soldiers was to draw their rifles. He quickly said no, stand down. I accept this. This is what has to happen. And shortly after they became friends again and he took Benelong over to England. Unfortunately it wasn't the most previous of things. He paraded Benelong around as a sophisticated black man and he tried to use Benelong as his justification for colonisation. So Benelong Point was where Captain Philip gave Benelong his heart. But in saying that, goat island, B.M.L. was Benelong's birthright. So if he was never captured by the English, he would have inherited goat island for his own. So you said you've been working here for a couple of years? Have you ever worked on a boat before this, bro? No, so this was a complete 360 of my life. Before this I was actually painting trucks. So I've always been in tune with my culture, even from a young age. I was the only kid in my school that was able to play the Yiddiki and stuff like that. So every night I was the one kid that was brought up on stage and had to play the Yiddiki. So I quickly learnt how important it was to be in tune with your culture. And it's taken me places. For example, when I was literally on the harbour right now as we speak. When I was, I think I was about 12 or 13 years old. And the American baseball teams had come here to play. And they had actually contacted me and asked me to open for them. So at the time my little sister would have been about eight years old and I got her to come and play the clapsticks for me and she actually works here with me today. So she's another one of our performers on the boat. She isn't here today today but she does work for trouble warrior which shows we have a strong commitment to family at this organization. Love that as we sail past Tarronga Zoo at the moment. It's up there behind all those trees. I think bro. I'm on the boat today from NITV Radio. I love the fact that there's other mob here as well from around Sydney bro. Do you get many community members from our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities coming on the tribal warrior? Yeah absolutely. So it's quite diverse for people that we see from time to time and there's also a few opportunities out there to connect with some of our local elders. For example last week we had Absek come on which help Aboriginal carers. We had them come out, a lot of them shared their stories which was very empowering to see like for me as a young person to see elders come on the boat and to carry themselves with such warmth, kindness and respect. It's something to look up to and it's something to look forward to. This knowledge is only going to be kept around if we keep talking about it. The only way all our traditions have been passed down is through word of mouth. So the second that we stop talking about our traditions is the second that they're going to start to slowly die out. So we need to keep tabbing these conversations. As we still continue to cruise around Sydney Harbour right at the back of the boat we're sitting here and we've got the northern suburbs of Sydney, North Shore to our left, to Runga Zoo. We're looking at straight ahead and to our right would we double-bow rows bay over that way bro? Yep double-bow, yep. Two deadly. What's some of the feedback that you get from some of the mob and the tourists who come aboard this cultural cruise? Firstly is I don't want to give myself a big head but I've been gone then gone then. Been told I'm a fairly good storyteller. You're not being black fella. But the fact that I can still learn so much more. So I'm not a gatigal person myself but everything that I've been taught has been passed down to me through gatigal elders and I'm not oblivious to the fact that I don't know at all. There's still so much to be shared with me but the fact that I can be a vessel and feed that voice for them is very empowering and like like I said earlier the fact that the gatigal people are still around today is something amazing in itself. Like the smallpox pandemic did some pretty heinous things in this area and their language almost died out because of that. Their language is only around today because of William Dawes' journal. He was taught the local language by a young girl named Patigring and that language is all documented in that book and as much as yeah the lettering is not right we didn't use letters you know he's using English letters to translate our words. The words you can make out the sound from the way he wrote them and that's the only reason why we can still discover their language today. And let's talk about you know the environment in which you work. This beautiful gory has a stunning looking Sydney harbor. You must have learnt a lot about the marine maritime business bro. Yeah yeah so one thing that Trouble Warrior offers as an organisation is they offer maritime training to black fellas. So working here I came in here with no tickets to my name nothing and they have paid for me to get my deck end course so I'm qualified GBH now and we offer those services for free so we have an accredited trainer that works through our organisation as well and we bring them onto the boat and we'll deliver all the training and make sure they get qualified and in afterwards we even help them find jobs if they need to look for a job. Thanks so much today for your time on an ITB radio. Thanks for having me on the Trouble Warrior bro. No worries thanks for coming. From top I feel like oh I'm gonna quit a give up. Working progress is a podcast to help skill migrants rebuild their careers in a new country. You'll hear inspiring real life stories, expert advice and valuable tips to help you find a job and advance your career. Working progress, listen now wherever you get your podcasts.