Author: Ashleigh Fielding

IN A short chapter for a national anthology titled Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, dual cultural woman Carol Pettersen gives a deeply personal account of what it is like to be on the receiving end of bigotry – from both white and black people.

“This is probably the beginning of more writings of mine,” Mrs Pettersen tells The Weekender.

“It’s also about the racism displayed by some Aboriginal people today, not just non-Aboriginal people, and this did not happen to just me and my family but many others born into a dual culture.”

It is an experience shared by the book’s editor, Anita Heiss, a Wiradjuri woman who grew up in Sydney.

In her 2012 autobiography titled ‘Am I Black Enough For You?’, Dr Heiss asks why Australia is so obsessed with notions of identity.

Mrs Pettersen’s father was a white man, and her mother a Menang Noongar woman born by the banks of Lake Mullocullup, or Warriup Swamp as most Noongar people know the waterway east of Albany.

“Mum was semi-tribal, in that she lived in the bush all her life, and we grew up in the bush,” Mrs Pettersen says.

“She knew nothing else but living in the bush.

“I’ve taught my family to be just as proud of their white grandfather as they are of their black grandmother.”

In his 2006 interim decision on native title claims over south-western Australia, Federal Court Justice Murray Wilcox concluded that Aboriginal people were forced off their land, families broken up, and “probably in every Noongar family there is at least one white male ancestor”.

“That’s where all our surnames come from,” Mrs Pettersen reflects matter-of-factly on Justice Wilcox’s observation.

In the ruling, he expressed surprise that members of families seemed mostly to have kept in contact with each other and with other Noongar families, and many – if not most – children had learned traditional skills and Noongar beliefs.

Mrs Pettersen says the racism she still faces from some Noongar people is unfair on those with dual cultural backgrounds, and the bigotry has deep roots.

“The government did this,” she explains.

“Let me tell you, what happened when we moved into the mission, my brother and sister were there first, and I was at home and I didn’t know where they’d gone.

“We were still in the bush, Mum and Dad and me and my sister.”

She says her mother and father insulated her and her older sister from the politics of the time.

“All we knew were glorious days,” she smiles.

Mrs Pettersen says that when she and her sister moved to the mission they stayed in a separate little room from other Noongar girls who lived in a dormitory.

“We were not allowed in their room, and they were never allowed in our room,” she recounts.

“Now I don’t know what they told them, but we read, later on in getting our files, that we were to be regarded as whites.

“They must have told these girls, ‘don’t go in there because they are white girls’, and that’s been passed down, even though they know my mother’s black, and some of them are my cousins and yet they still called us ‘white’ because they were taught by the government to do this.”

Mrs Pettersen says that without the combined discipline of her mother’s and father’s cultures her family would not be “the tolerant and loving people that we are”.

“Every now and again you’ll get from non-Aboriginal people: ‘But, you’re different’;” she says.

“And I say to them that I am the proper Aboriginal.”

She says it is not enough to say: “I’m a proud Aboriginal woman”.

“It’s about the doing and it’s about the feeling and it’s about the application of that pride,” she adds.

“Well, show us what pride is – and that’s about when I look down and see my great-grandchildren following my same values that my grandparents taught me, that’s what pride feels like.

“That comes from a long line of discipline and a foundation of values.”

Co-owner of York Street’s Paperbark Merchants, Lockie Cameron, says sales of a small run of the book have exceeded expectations.

The bookshop has ordered in more, which should be available by the time The Weekender hits the streets this week.

Image: Mrs Pettersen with the book in which her chapter appears. Photo: Chris Thomson

TORTUOUS negotiations – including on a safe entry point and a $9000 piece of public art – continue over a fuel station planned for near the Chester Pass roundabout, despite a building permit having been issued for the contentious project.

City of Albany chief planner Paul Camins told The Weekender a building application was approved for the Albany Highway site in April.

He said the permit was valid for two years, and if the proponent, Peter D. Webb & Associates town planners, wished to extend it a standard application process would apply.

In August, the State Administrative Tribunal overturned the City’s February 2017 refusal of a development application for the project.

In her conditions of approval, Tribunal member Rosetta Petrucci ordered that access points and stormwater management to the highway be designed to the specification of Main Roads Western Australia.

Main Roads Great Southern regional manager Andrew Duffield said such a requirement was standard, and in “99.99 per cent of the cases never an issue”.

“This one’s been topical from Day 1,” he said.

“We have just been wanting to work with [the proponent] over safe access to the site and it’s taken quite some time to get them to the table.

“It’s very clear there’s a whole range of other things they need to get approval and endorsement of.”

Mr Duffield said stormwater was one.

“If they’re looking to tap into our network, then we need to know about it and we need to give approval of it,” he said.

He explained that drawings submitted with the development application were site layout plans only that “did not give any particular engineering detail”.

He said that for projects abutting a main road it was perfectly normal for discussions to ensue on technical details such as the type of paving, and a traffic management plan for the construction phase.

“It’s not as simple as: ‘SAT has given us approval, we can do whatever we want’,” he said.

Mr Duffield said he sat down with the proponent on May 7 to help improve the project’s on-site traffic circulation, which would lead to fewer cars backing up out onto the highway.

The planned exit on to Albany Highway is about five car lengths from the entrance to the roundabout, the worst intersection in regional WA in terms of frequency and cost of crashes.

“I hope [the proponent] come[s] back to us fairly quickly with their modifications, and if things are looking okay we’ll tick it off, and away they’ll go,” Mr Duffield said.

He said Main Roads was dealing with Peter D. Webb & Associates on “a number of other” projects in Perth.

“We’re very happy to see development, but there are some sites that are more challenging than others,” he said.

“Whilst [a fuel station] might be allowed under that zoning, so were a number of other options which had a lower traffic generation [and] traffic impact capacity.

“For example, a showroom would have been within those zonings and we would have been much happier with a showroom than a high traffic generating site.”

Mr Duffield said road safety was his paramount concern.

Ms Petrucci also ordered the developer to either erect a piece of public art worth 0.5 per cent of the $1.8 million project cost, or contribute 0.3 per cent of the project cost if additional landscape and building treatments were proposed to the satisfaction of the City.

Mr Camins said Peter D. Webb & Associates was yet to advise if art, or the extra landscaping and building work, would be chosen.

The company’s Managing Director, Nik Hidding, said his “client” had instructed him not to comment to the media.

The owner of the site is Victorian-based Procon Developments, which has arranged for at least two Coles Express and one BP servo to be built in WA.

GOODE Beach resident Charles Pierce was so nervous before meeting the Queen earlier this month, he was suited up and ready to leave for Buckingham Palace five hours early.

His visit to the palace was no ordinary tourist trip – he flew halfway across the world to receive a medal from Queen Elizabeth II and be granted the title of ‘MBE’ at The Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List ceremony on May 4.

Mr Pierce was recognised for four decades of education services to Vanuatu, the country he called home for more than half his life.

The 77-year-old Englishman said after travelling throughout Asia in his younger days, he discovered the Baha’i faith, and it was through this faith he began his journey of teaching abroad.

He now calls Albany home and has done so for the past five years, in-between trips to Vanuatu.

“I’m a teacher by trade, and I heard through my Baha’i faith that people were needed in the Pacific, to help develop and grow the Baha’i people in the community,” he said.

“So I lived and worked for a year in Vanuatu, married my wife in Australia a year later in 1968, then in 1971 went back to Vanuatu and stayed there for 42 years.”

Mr Pierce said his work in Vanuatu focused on promoting unity and education within the Baha’i faith, building greater community cohesion and empowering people.

“One of the two questions the Queen asked me was what kind of education I was involved in,” Mr Pierce said.

“I told her I was principal of a secondary and tertiary school, was involved in training teachers, taught a Baha’i moral education program, and was involved in developing, producing and delivering a course in climate change.

“She thought it was wonderful.”

The other question the Queen asked Mr Pierce during the MBE ceremony was whether he lived in Vanuatu.

“I told her that I did, and that I remembered her visiting years ago, and that she wore a yellow dress,” Mr Pierce said.

“I think she was quite moved when I said that, she was smiling.”

Despite speaking with relative ease during his few moments with the Queen, Mr Pierce was a bundle of nerves in the hours leading up to his royal encounter.

He said he took an hour to carefully put on his suit, a piece of attire he hadn’t donned in 50 years.

“I was terrified,” he laughed.

“The night before the ceremony, I didn’t get to bed until after midnight and I was up at 4am.

“I just could not sleep.

“We had to be there at 9.45am but I was ready by 5am!”

After keeping it a secret from his family for two months, and finally receiving his medallion, Mr Pierce said the reality of being awarded MBE finally sunk in.

“It wasn’t real until I got the medal,” he said.

“I feel very privileged and honoured.

“But it’s not about the medal, it’s about what you have done to receive it.”

 

Photo: British Ceremonial Arts

GREAT Southern Police Superintendent Dom Wood will return to Perth where he is set to become the state’s top traffic cop.

“I’ve done my tenure, so I’m off in July, August,” he told The Weekender.

He said that, come July, he will have been in Albany for three years.

“It’s gone very quickly,” he said.

“I love the region, I love the people.”

Mr Wood said Superintendent Ian Clarke, who currently works in the police professional standards unit in Perth, would fill his shoes.

“He’s a really nice fella, a good bloke,” he said.

“He’s got a good background, in traffic for a while as a superintendent, and done some crime work, and worked country as well.

“He was an OIC up in Kununurra, and also in Dunsborough, and has some detective background as well.”

After a handover to Mr Clarke in July, Mr Wood will become Superintendent, State Traffic.

“You can, if all the stars line up, try to push [your tenure] out to maybe four [years], which I was kind of thinking, maybe [until] Christmas, but they said ‘no’, they want me to take over and do the State traffic role up at Midland,” he said.

Immediately before coming to Albany from Perth, Superintendent Wood was the police force’s Manager, Media and Communications.

“We’ve got a couple of older kids back up in Perth, and we always knew I was never going to retire down here,” he said.

“I’m too young to retire, so I always knew this was about a three-year tenure.

“I’ll still get the chance to come back down here with a booze bus, maybe.”

He said he’d miss Albany’s bush walks and coffee shops.

“My wife and I were out on the boat on the weekend, the Vancouver Street Festival became a bit hot, and I said: ‘C’mon, let’s get the boat out’,” he said.

“We went out with a couple of friends of ours, and we were followed by dolphins in the harbour.

“So, I’ll miss the town, and the community is a very good community, a very friendly community.”

In other policing news, Mr Wood said a drug detection police dog was on the cards for the Great Southern (Drug dog for GS police, p.5 of today’s Weekender).

Mr Wood said one priority he would pass on to Mr Clarke would be to “keep pushing” for a canine to join the ranks of the local constabulary.

AN ALBANY woman confronted by another who admitted she was “completely and utterly paralytic” after consuming “four litres of goon” has pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful wounding.

On May 3, police prosecutor Mike Russell told Albany Magistrates Court that Elicitor May Roberts, then 49, was intoxicated when between 8.35am and 9.48am on November 14 another woman approached her in her Orana home.

Sergeant Russell said Roberts slashed the visitor in the left forearm and upper arm with a 30cm carving knife, before cutting the woman’s forehead, leaving a two-centimetre-long gash.

The visitor fell to the ground, Roberts left her house with the knife, and police later found her walking along South Coast Highway.

Defence lawyer Richard Hickson said the stabbed visitor later admitted she had “consumed four litres of goon” and was “completely and utterly paralytic”.

He said the woman had been “completely obnoxious” and Roberts “felt threatened by her”.

Magistrate Raelene Johnston told Roberts she was “very lucky that something more serious did not happen”, as picking up the knife created “potential for greater injury or death”.

Roberts told Magistrate Johnston she was no longer drinking.

“Good,” the Magistrate said.

“Continue on that path.”

Roberts was ordered to report to community corrections staff for the next 12 months and not to reoffend during that time lest she breach the order.