| Transcript (page 2 of 8) |
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| The only reason why he didnt wear the green and gold of Australian cricket was because he was a black man. They brought him down to Sydney here to teach the young students from Sydney University how to play cricket in the early years, in the early 1900s, in a game at Redfern, I think at the oval there somewhere where they were playing. As soon as they found out that he was a black man they walked off and wouldnt play with him, you know. |
| Frank Heimans: When was this, in which year about? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: In the early 1900s. Ive got all that stuff documented there, I can give you the exact times and stuff like that there. Ill show it to you afterwards. I should have brought them out to show you before. But theres just so much history of all this Aboriginal achievement thats never ever been acknowledged in this country ever, you know, and even today. Weve got all the so-called experts out in this country that know everything about Aboriginal people and some of these people, and theyre writing about us, the media and everything there and the stereotypes of what they do when they speak about us. You know, some of these people have never even met an Aboriginal person, wouldnt know one if they bloody well fell over them. Its ridiculous, you know. Were the first people of this land and, if youll pardon the expression, were counted as shit in our own country. Thats wrong, morally wrong. |
| Frank Heimans: Who did Grandfather Sam marry; was it a tribal woman? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Yes, Granny Mabel. She was full-blood. Grandfather in those old days, he was classed as a half-caste, although today youre not allowed by law to say that youre any degree of cast - youre either Aboriginal or white, whichever you identify as in the community, you know, and are accepted as such. On mums side, mums father was an Italian banana plantation owner who raped my tribal grandmother and thats how my mother came to be. He never reared my mother, my grandmother did, and I never knew what my grandmothers name was because our mother run away and left us when I was only a kid, you know, I was only six when mum left. I did research and found out, I went and tracked it all down, and her tribal name was Babundi and her name was Nellie Solomon. So with Mother Nell being named Nell, its no wonder I was very partial to Nellies, hey, you know, that dear old name. |
| Frank Heimans: Its a Victorian name. |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: What do they say in that song, Its a grand old name. |
| Frank Heimans: And your father then, can you tell me something about your father? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Well, dad was the first born, dad was the eldest, and they all worked for the property owners, the Yabsleys. Everybody from the little mission where I was born worked and built up those big cattle hierarchies, and I counted six different homesteads what these people owned, and they wouldnt have had these places, because that place where Im talking about was known as the big scrub, you know, and mustering the cattle and that. So there were stockmen and women, housemaids and servants, my people. They were the first pioneers in fact. Then again, you wont find that in any white history books in this country either, you see. |
| Frank Heimans: Is that the Yabsley family of which Michael Yabsley is a descendent? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Oh, yeah, oh yeah. As a matter of fact, I interviewed his mother - oh, I forget her name. She married Bob Yabsley and then when Bob Yabsley died she married Erle Cardow, and Erle Cardow was the grandson of Cunningham Henderson who was the first squatter that had a place called Main Camp Homestead at Raphville outside of Casino. It was the first place of employment of that grandfather of mine, the cricketer, when he was only a youth, Main Camp Homestead. So its all connected and tied in, you know, and he gave me permission ... when I was doing the research he gave me a squatters diary belonging to his grandfather, Cunningham Henderson, and in that it even had all the written stuff down about our people and how he would never have been able to have his property and run them without Aboriginal stockmen. And there were women too, my mother was a stockwoman, used to muster stock, you know. |
| Frank Heimans: So what sort of things did they write about the Aboriginal people and in what tone was it? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Oh, well it was a real condescending tone, but anyhow he did acknowledge that he would never have been able to have his properties without the help of Aboriginal peoples involvement, you know. Anyhow, he wrote great about grandfather and they looked after grandfather pretty well because of the cricket - they were the ones that played the cricket with him - but they were also the dispossessers of my people for our land and our dreaming there in Bundjalung country, you know. I counted, I think it was, as I said, about six homesteads, Minumia, Gibberagee, Coolum Coolum. Minumia means place of plenty, plenty bush tucker, you know, and stuff like that. But there was six of them that they could rattle off like that, these were properties that they owned. |
| Frank Heimans: Now, what was life like on the mission, on Box Ridge Mission? That was near Coraki, wasnt it? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Yeah. |
| Frank Heimans: Can you tell me? What do you remember about it? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: Everything. You had a white manager, and the time that I was born there, like when I was there, what I remember, is Mrs Hiscock, she was the manageress. You had to have permission to come and go. You were not allowed to go for outside work unless you had a little pass from that manager or manageress - they were like white commandants running this place. If your people wanted to come and spend some time with their relatives here they were specified a time and if they didnt leave then the police were sent to hunt them off. These missions were mostly out of town, out of sight, near rubbish dumps, and mine, Box Ridge Mission, was next to the cemetery at Coraki, right on the corner. Today, the last remnants of the racism there is the segregated cemetery, the white monolithic graves up here with all the big headstones and down here youve got the little fence posts, black, red and yellow, and the Aboriginal section. |
| Frank Heimans: You mean the whites and Aborigines were not buried in the same place? |
| Ruby Langford Ginibi: No way. When I was a kid there was segregated schools, a segregated hospital with Abos only, a ward down the back, and today its all in together this fine weather, you know, so its improved a little bit. But the people never intermixed socially. They divided people still; theres not been a coming together of the two cultures there, no, and my people are living in not third world conditions, fourth world conditions. They showed a documentary on 4-Corners in 1961, what the 4-Corners team did of my mission, and its a disgrace. |