Black Anzac: the life and death of an Aboriginal man who fought for king and country

Submitted by Paul Daley on Wed, 25/03/2015 - 2:04pm

The experience of black Australians is slowly being allowed to seep into the official Anzac story, writes novelist and journalist Paul Daley. Here he charts the life of one extraordinary Indigenous soldier, Douglas Grant

With a little over a month to go until the centenary of the failed Gallipoli landings, Australia is already in the Titan’s Grip of Anzac commemoration.

Or perhaps it is better described as a celebration.

I find it difficult to understand how so many Aboriginal men were allowed to enlist in the army, as they were not allowed to vote in federal and state elections and they were not counted as human beings. Why did the government want them to enlist? Was it because they did not care who went to fight the war for them? I feel strongly that the protector of Aborigines should have stepped in and stopped them from enlisting. When I look back over the history of my people, I see the [Aboriginal] protector interfering in all aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives, most of the time for no good reason. And yet here they had a good reason but did nothing to stop the men enlisting. My mother and her family always blamed the protector for the deaths.”

Whilst this was going on there were shots and yells all round. In a few minutes quietness reigned and we all collected and found our live number had increased by two gins who had been captured by the trackers and a boy of about five or six years of age. The gins were not a bit upset but the little fellow was very frightened. The little boy we had captured seemed to know I was protecting him. Sucking his thumb he edged towards me and away from the others, eventually getting right alongside of me and in fact scarcely left my side during the next two or three days that we roamed the scrub. During which time, I may say, there were no more dispersals. That kiddy afterwards became Douglas Grant. After several days with the boy, Brown heard that Robert Grant’s expedition was nearby and that ‘Mrs Grant … remarked she would like to get a little black boy … In leaving him with her I knew that he would be well looked after. She looked a motherly kind.’ The Grants fostered the boy who’d been known to his Ngadjonji people (according to popular contemporary accounts of his life) as ‘Poppin Jerri’.”

He was very conscious of being black. Quite often he’d come in and grin after washing his hands … then show me them and say, ‘Ma, I think they’re getting whiter.’ He had a difficult time with girls, of course. He would never have contemplated marrying an Aboriginal woman, and his pride or his principles wouldn’t allow him to become too serious about white girls. There was a girl in Annandale, Sydney, who became terribly fond of him and wanted to marry him – but he wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea.”

He was separated from the white prisoners and held with the darker-skinned soldiers of the far-flung British empire

He is an adopted boy of my cousin Robert Grant of Sydney Museum. He is a native whom he got up country when a tiny tot. I am afraid he will [not cope with] the change of climate very much. He has been well educated and is a draughtsman to trade + from one who has met him he is a good lad. I feel anxious about him.”

We are very much interested to hear that he is a real Australian, so we must try and take special care of him on that account. I think there are one or two others, but I am not sure.”

I am happy to say that I am enjoying perfect health, but as is only natural I long … for home. Could I also get a copy each in book form the poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson; or some books of Australian life … something in which to pass away a few leisure moments which are generally filled with that longing for home sweet home far away across the sea, and to read of it in prose, verse or story would help to overcome that longing. Perhaps, madam, you are not aware that I am a native Australian, adopted in infancy and educated by my foster parents whose honoured name I bear [and who] imbued me with their … spirit of love of home, honour and patriotism.”

Am so very interested to hear that you are now secretary of the British help committee [of the Red Cross). It must give you a great deal of work, but of course, as an old Scots College boy I feel quite sure you are equal to the occasion. I know that you are a real Australian, as I have heard it from some of your comrades. I used to think that I was, as both my mother and grandmother were born in Australia, which is rather an unusual record, but I am afraid you would only look on me as quite a newcomer.”

I first met the man in 1918 in a south Berlin suburb, while I was working with the Royal Prussian Photographic Commission. Our objective was to collect material on languages, songs and dialects among the Allied prisoners, and of course we regarded Grant as something of a prize. In fact he was not very useful for any study of the Australian Aboriginal; he had been removed from the tribe, and he regarded the natives with almost as much curiosity as we did.”

In the late 1920s, as the trajectory of his personal decline was becoming clear, Grant took up the black cause

This country was taken without warfare, such as marked the annexation of India, Africa and lesser parts of the Empire. What can we do and what are we doing for the first inhabitants, the rightful owners of this land which was usurped and portioned as your heritage?”

The result of the advent of the European was the sacrilegious breaking of age old customs, laws and dignity, the outcome of war and bloodshed. The native in righteous indignation and wrath fought for the honour of his daughter, wife and family.”

It lies at the footstool of the government, this great crime [Coniston] – against a harmless and inoffensive people, left to their own resources, their land bartered and sold, the spoliation of their only food supply … the kangaroo, wallaby, etc, also the ravishing and rapine of their women folk. If they call for justice they are answered with the lash or the gun … the original inhabitants of the … youngest continent may be found to be the cradle of the world’s people of the present day.”

He used to speak Gaelic fluently, and I was always asking him to stop using the wretched language. He used to enjoy himself at the reunions early after the war, but he became a sadder, progressively more dejected figure as each April the 25th went by. One day in the late 40s, I saw him sitting under a tree as the fellows from my old unit were marching into the Domain … I broke out of the ranks and went across to him. ‘What are you doing there?’ I asked. ‘Why aren’t you with your old mates? ‘I’m not wanted any more,’ Grant told me. ‘I don’t want to join in. I don’t belong. I’ve lived long enough.’”