a party!

A wow of a party!

Jemima Garrett

Wellington

IN the central Queensland city of Rockhampton there’s a part of town the locals call “Kanakatown” and it was here recently that one of Australia’s old est communities got together for a party to end all parties.

Five hundred people from all over Australia flooded into north Rockhampton for 3 days of non-stop celebration. The party was a reunion of the descendents of Pacific islanders brought to Australia last century during the notorious blackbirding era.

The grandparents and great grandparents of the South Sea islanders - as they now call themselves to distinguish their com munity from more recent Pacific Island immigrants - came as indentured labourers, often under slave-like conditions, to work in the cane fields of Queensland or, in the case of women, as domes tic servants.

The idea for the party was conceived in the mind of longstand ing Kanakatown resident, Lloyd Willie, back in June 1995, when he went to Brisbane for his brother’s funeral. “It was the sadness of losing most of the old South Sea islanders,” said Willie who swore, that day, that the next event he attended at which hundreds of his family and friends were present would be a reunion of the community he grew up in.ln January this year, three of the most formidable women in the north Rockhampton community returned from a trip down to the beach determined to make sure Lloyd Willie’s dream become a reality ... and so the reunion began life. Willie, a rock musician by trade, wanted to celebrate the com munity spirit that he remembered so strongly from his growing up days, 50 years before.

Back then, the community was renowned for its music. In the evenings, sometimes far into the night, people would sit under two big Mango trees on "the flat” singing all manner of songs. The harmonies they leamt at church, a few guitars, a harmonica and an accordian, were put to work on anything from the latest popular songs they heard on the radio through to gospel, country and even the odd Pacific island song. 'Kanakatown’ was established around the turn of the century, when those South Sea Islanders NOT forced to return home by the imposition of the white Australia pol icy, formed tight-knit communities up and down the east coast of Australia. The 300 or so who gravitated to north Rockhamton used

their meagre savings to buy or lease land on one of the six streets which still make up 'Kanakatown’. Now members of those same families number 4000-5000. One of Willie’s first tasks as co-ordi nator of the reunion, was to begin work on a ‘Kanakatown’ book.

He put out the word that he wanted everyone to write up their own family’s story and it was as these stories began to roll in that some of the most profound consequences of the reunion started to become apparent.

One day a couple of months before the event itself, Willie was down at the beach after performing with his band, when he met a women called Linda Scott. After Willie had told her all about the reunion and asked her to come along, Linda Scott got on to the subject of her mother, whose name was Joycie Singdong.

“It’s funny you should say that” replied Willie, “because I know a Billy Singdong who is coming up for the reunion and I think his mother was Joycie Singdong too.” Linda Scott’s mother, like many South Sea islanders in those days, had had to travel long distances to get work on cattle stations or fruit picking and had not been able to take her older children with her. For Willie, too, the reunion brought new and surprising information about his family.

Work by his daughter Michelle in digging up birth, marriage and death certificates, revealed that the family who had lived next door to Willie all his life were in fact second cousins, all being the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of a Mary Roomus who arrived in Australia in 1887.

The party itself was held on the long weekend in June. Creek St, one of the main streets in ‘Kanakatown’, was closed to traffic and marquees erected at each end. Events began at 7.00 am on Saturday with breakfast and didn’t let up until late Monday evening. There was music and reminiscing about time spent down the creek where the kids would spend hours swimming and catch ing crayfish and freshwater perch, about church on Sunday and about the games they used to play. The South Sea islanders were joined by the representatives of the Aboriginal community, who officially welcomed them to their land, and by students from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Samoa, who took time off their studies at the Rockhampton campus of the Central Queensland University, to form an impromptu dance troop for the occasion.

A major victory was in convincing the Rockhampton City Council to officially hand over to the community, the vacant park land known as ‘the flat’ , which had been the centre of life in ‘Kanakatown’. For Willie, the most important dimension of the reunion was to create a cultural revival that would teach today’s children just what the community spirit of his young years was all about. During the three days, the kids of ‘Kanakatown’ got to do just about everything their predecessors had done and more. Willie had them playing games of all sorts, listening to stories, singing, dancing, laughing and crying with their eldest. He held a full scale Guy Fawkes night on ‘the flat’, complete with a circle of 1000 sparklers, a huge bonfire and a Guy Fawkes dummy with hungers in his buttonhole. Just to make sure the kids got the message that culture is neither static nor boring, he finished it off with a concert from his rock band.

The black American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, in one of his most famous speeches spoke those immortal words, "I have a dream”. In Sydney these days, a new T-shirt summing up the vision of that political scourge Pauline Hanson, is popular. On the front it features Martin Luther King and under his face , those words. On the back Pauline Hanson says “I have a fish shop”.