“As they were leading me up, I looked up and around the galleries and I could feel the whole Aboriginal race, of those who had gone before, were all up there, and I could visualise, I could hear voices and amongst those voices was the voice of my grandfather saying, ‘It’s alright now boy, you are finally in the council with the Australian Elders. Everything is now going to be alright.'”
Such did Neville Bonner recall about the moment he entered the Australian Senate in 1971, becoming the first Indigenous Australian to hold such a critical position. It was a turning point on the long road to equality and reconciliation between the Aboriginal people and those who had taken the land from them; a road with no end yet in sight.
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Neville Bonner was born on March 28, 1922. At the time, Aboriginal people were not permitted entrance to hospitals, so his mother was forced to give birth to her second son beneath a palm tree upon a small island in the mouth of the Tweed River in New South Wales. “…that she and I both survived is a miracle.”
Bonner’s family came from notable lineage. His grandfather was one of the surviving Elders of the Jagara tribe, a group that had inhabited the area between Queensland’s capital city Brisbane, and the northern point of the Great Dividing Range.
In this society, that meant nothing.
He grew up with his mother and elder brother – his father had abandoned the family shortly after Bonner’s birth – and like all the other indigenous people living in shanty towns close to suburban areas, was treated as inhuman. They could not speak their own language without feeling ashamed, and weren’t allowed to enter cities between sunset and sunrise.
“I lived under lantana bushes, I’ve seen more dinner times than I’ve seen dinners.”
The family eventually moved to the nearby Lismore area, where Bonner’s mother worked as a washerwoman for hotels. Bonner began working alongside her at an early age; such as they weren’t allowed in hospitals, Aboriginal children were not allowed to enrol in normal schools. Since there was no Aboriginal schooling system in the region at the time, the young Bonner’s only option was to work.
His mother went on to start a de-facto relationship with Frank Randell, a tracker for the local police station. When Bonner joined him at work one day, someone enquired why he wasn’t in school. After realising the situation, the officer talked to the principal of the South Lismore School, who agreed to allow Bonner, his older brother Henry, and sister Eva to attend class.
After sewing them appropriate clothes to wear, Bonner’s mother sent them off to school. They around at eight o’clock on a Monday morning. Within an hour, they were the only three students left on school grounds. Parents had heard that ‘black kids’ had been invited to the school, and subsequently withdrew their children.
Some time later, Bonner received the first hint of a real education when a local lady received finance to start a small school in the back of a dairy farm. He attended for nine months before his mother died, and Bonner was brought to live in Queensland by his grandmother. Here, he enrolled in the Beaudesert State School, showing his eagerness and ability to learn by jumping three grades in a single year.
Bonner learnt to read, write, and speak fluent English, the latter thanks to his grandmother. “…she always said that if you didn’t have an academic education, and you were able to speak well, people would not notice whether you were educated or not, and it would get you, you know, get you through life. And I think she proved that quite well. In my case, anyway.”
He also made many friends, both black and white. For the first time in his life, the school offered Bonner a refuge from racism and hate.
But tragedy struck once again soon after.
Before completing his education at 15, Bonner’s grandmother died. Left aimless, he made his way back across the border to New South Wales, working in plantations over the next 12 months. When his uncle came looking for him in 1937, Bonner was brought up to an Aboriginal settlement outside of Rockhampton, Queensland.
Here he met Mona Bansfield, who was working as a servant for the wife of the ambulance superintendent. The pair were soon married.
Not long after, Mona was ironing for her boss when she burnt a handkerchief. The woman grabbed her and yelled “You stupid black bitch! What did you do?” Mona replied by slapping her, resulting in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs sending her to Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement for those the state deemed ‘disruptive’, or who came from mixed racial backgrounds.
When Bonner finally managed to visit her, Mona fell pregnant. She gave birth, and came to live with Bonner on the cattle station where he worked. Six months later, their son nearly died from amoebic dysentery. The experience shocked Mona, and she decided to return to Palm Island. This time, Bonner came with her.
His time on Palm Island was some of the most important of his life. It was a difficult place to raise a family – they would go on to have five children – but they persevered, and would call the island home between 1943 and 1959.
Most importantly, it was on the island that Bonner first spurred an interest in furthering the cause of his people. He was President of the Palm Island Social Welfare Association, and eventually worked his way up to become assistant overseer for the settlement.
It was a difficult position; Bonner could have been forced to take the side of his people or his employees as disputes broke out. Instead, heroically, he vowed to stay neutral, even when he was assaulted near to death by locals and dismissed by his boss.
In 1960, he moved to Ipswich, and joined the board of directors of the One People of Australia League, an indigenous rights organisation. Over the next decade he would fight for the equality, stability, and dignity of Aboriginal Australians, ultimately becoming president of the Queensland chapter in 1970.
Bonner made his first move into politics in 1967, when Aboriginal people were finally given the opportunity to vote. He joined The Liberal Party, initially as a party worker, but quickly began to form close relationships with local politicians. “And I began to think … here’s an area where I can do something for my own people.”
The decision was celebrated by his peers, and Bonner was preselected for election. He lost the general election, but in 1971 Dame Annabelle Rankin left the Senate to become High Commission to New Zealand. Bonner was chosen to fill her seat, and in doing so, became the first Indigenous Australian to sit in Australian Parliament.
“For the first time in the history of this country there was an aboriginal voice in the parliament and that gave me an enormous feeling of overwhelming responsibility. I made people aware, the lawmakers in this country, I made them aware of indigenous people. I think that was an achievement.”
He would win the seat of his own right in 1972, 1974, 1975, and 1980.
At an early point in his career, Bonner learned that an unknown party had placed a bounty on his life. The Federal Police would end up escorting him in his duties for some time, though they never learned where the threat originated from.
That wasn’t going to stop Bonner.
As expected, he voted based on his own feelings rather than the party line, much to the chagrin of the Liberals. He was not only an advocate for the rights of his own people, but of other suppressed cultures around the world. Famously, after a visit to East Timor, he tried to convince Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to lend his support to the East Timorese people. Whitlam told him that he didn’t have the time, and that Bonner should instead talk to his staff. “I wanted to talk to the butcher, but the butcher didn’t want to talk to me,” he announced at a press conference afterwards.
In 1979, Bonner was named joint Australian of the Year.
Rejection of pressure to conform saw Bonner dropped from the Liberal ticket in 1983. He ran as an independent, but was unsuccessful in claiming his seat for a sixth time.
Upon his departure from parliament, the Hawke government appointed him to the board of directors of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1984.
In the 90s, he was a member of the Griffith University Council, from whom he received an honorary doctorate in 1993.
Bonner announced he was dying of lung cancer in 1998, but vowed to continue pursuing his goals.
Shortly, after, he made one of his last public appearances when he was elected to the Constitutional Convention, delivering a damning speech in support of the Aboriginal people.
“…my heart is heavy. I fear for my children, and for my grandchildren. I worry that what has proven to be a stable society that now recognises my people is about to be replaced. How dare you.”
A full transcript of the speech (some of which is not included in this video) can be found here.
Neville Bonner died on February 5, 1999.
The following year, The Nevile Bonner Scholarship was established by the federal government in his honour. It is the most prestigious scholarship for Indigenous Australians studying political sciences in Australian universities.
Australia has a long way to go before we truly realise Bonner’s dream and, in fact, the dream of the vast majority in this country, of unity between its people. As we strive for such a future, we can not forget the past, and the work that so many like Bonner did to make it a better place for not just the indigenous community, but for all Australians.