Eddie Betts: The Boy From Boomerang Crescent Read online

  The best times for me were recess and lunch because I could run around and play footy. For me, footy meant an even playing field and a language we could all speak. Out on the field, there were no perspectives that I didn’t understand.

  We did have a ‘Nunga’ class in Port Lincoln that was only for Blackfullas, and I loved being in there. It helped me feel okay about being at school – even if just for a while. We even had a ‘Black bench’ where we’d meet and eat our lunch. That doesn’t sound like much, but that bench was a safe place for us, and it’s really important for minority groups to have those. It allows us to be around people who understand us and who can empathise fully when things are hard. That bench gave me a sense of security when I was feeling unsure.

  It’s hard to describe the feeling of being part of a minority within a population. Humans have lots of things in common across cultures – we seek love, security, shelter, and so on. Our Aboriginal Culture is so unique and our history is so long, though, and colonisation has been traumatic for us. Sometimes, even simple childhood routines like going to school are hard for us mob.

  When I felt like I didn’t belong, I’d start to get into trouble. I experimented with alcohol, I stole little things, I smoked. I remember stealing a bunch of chocolates from the school canteen and going home to share the box with everyone. I know now that I was just bored and uninterested, but that led me to some seriously risky behaviours. In my soul, I never intended to do anything that would hurt anyone; that’s not in my nature. I was just doing silly things for a thrill or to pass the time.

  * * *

  Anna ran into one of my old literacy and numeracy teachers once, and the teacher remembered that I was always ‘the one in class who would have all the stats from the footy on the weekend’. ‘He’d sit in class and compare his stats to everyone else and to his games from previous weeks just to work out how he could get better for the next game,’ the teacher told Anna.

  In 2001, I went from playing in the Under 14s to the Under 17s, even though I was still eligible for the younger grades. I wasn’t intimidated – I was over the moon. Finally, I’d get to play with the older cousins I’d been taking on in the alleyways back in Kalgoorlie. In those games in the higher grade, I learned a lot and learned fast. Playing with the older guys was great for my footy – but after most games, we’d go back to one of the boys’ houses, where I also learned about smoking gunja and drinking.

  People could see that I was determined and focused on footy, but I still didn’t have a goal. I never set out to win the awards that I won, it was just great when I got them. I didn’t think past the next game or the next week.

  Our main rival was the Marble Range Football Club, whose home ground was on the highway just outside Port Lincoln. We also had a great rivalry with the Boston Tigers. I kicked nine goals in one game against them – even though the game plan had been to set up my cousin Michael Burgoyne, who ended up with 21 goals.

  It’s hard to get good stories about that time out of people – they’re all too modest. But everyone I played with and against in that comp was just as good as me. It just seemed like roadblocks started to pop up once people started getting into alcohol and smoking.

  I remember hanging out one day with my clan – me, Victor, Tim Russell, Andrew, Josh Saunders – when we got a phone call to tell us the Port Lincoln Best and Fairest ceremony was on. They had rung because Victor was leading the vote count. We headed to another cousin’s house, and by the time we got there the call had come through that Victor had won the thing. I had come runner-up, and third place went to Josh.

  But we were already sitting around and smoking weed.

  Yep: the top three placegetters were not only not at the ceremony, they were sitting around getting wasted together. It must have been an ordinary look to the other players who had actually turned up and hadn’t won anything. There was nothing we could do, though; we just told them to deliver the trophies to the clubroom and that we’d pick them up later.

  Now that I had won a trophy, I didn’t actually want it, and it ended up at Dad’s place. At the time, he was living in a two-bedroom flat just around the corner from the Mallee Park footy club. It was actually kind of cool when I dropped it in. He had won seven Best and Fairest awards and when I handed him my trophy, he said, ‘Put it up there, son, next to mine.’

  That year, I was chosen to play against Port Adelaide Country, which involved jumping on a bus and traveling 650 kilometres to Adelaide for the comp. We did pretty well and I won the Best and Fairest for that team. Then I got picked to go back and actually play for the Port Adelaide Magpies (yep, I wore the Port black and white before ever donning the Crows tri-colours). Because it was a scholarship squad, I got taken through the Crows’ change rooms, which were pretty cool to see.

  You’d think I would have been over the moon. On the whole, though, with only one other Aboriginal kid in the scholarship program, I felt really uncomfortable and uneasy. I also didn’t bring any shorts. I just didn’t pack any. I was too embarrassed to say anything, so when we had to do a beep test the first morning I was there, I rocked up in a pair of rolled-up, baggy Nike tracksuit pants. Someone gave me some shorts and I played in a trial match later that day. We went to the movies that night. I sat there the whole time just not wanting to be there. I cried afterwards and rang Mum, asked her to come and pick me up. She was staying in Adelaide and came and got me. All I wanted was to be back in my bubble with the boys in Lincoln. Mum understood, so she spoke to the people in charge and I went home – just like that. I didn’t hear from anyone there again.

  That’s just one example of how my mum always made sure I had every opportunity to play football that she could give me – while still looking after me as I did it.

  Meanwhile, the AFL was playing out on television screens around the country – and I was hardly watching any of it. If you asked me who I barracked for in those days, it was probably the Crows – but I wasn’t really into it. I maybe saw part of the 1997 and 1998 grand finals. Watching the game on TV meant I couldn’t be outside playing it – so why would I do that?

  My mum’s dad, Cadley Sambo, was a Gubrun man who spent his early years painted up darker than he actually was because the welfare people of the time were collecting all the little half-caste kids to send them to the Methodist Mogumber Mission north of Perth.

  The journalist and writer Stuart Rintoul wrote about my grandfather in his 1993 book The Wailing: A National Black Oral History. In that book, my grandfather tells the story of how the mounted police would trample the camp where he lived, which destroyed the food supply. His mother would paint him up with burnt quandong to make his skin appear darker.

  Poppa Cadley was around 15 when he and two of his cousins were picked up after nicking a suitcase from a farmhouse. He got sent to the mission but he only lasted there a couple of weeks. He said they were ‘big bullies’ who used to force people who had bleeding hands and knees to pick potatoes out of the ground while they drove the plough. So, my grandfather took off, along with three others. They headed for the trainline. Once they hit the tracks, they knew which direction to go and started walking.

  My grandfather was headed for Coolgardie, five or six hundred kilometres from the mission. He split up from the others, only walking at night and ripping the clothes off his body to wrap around his bleeding feet. During that long walk, he would have had plenty of time to think about the contents of the suitcase they’d stolen. He used to laugh about that with the family later: the only things in it were pretty yellow and green dresses.

  On Christmas Day he made it back to his parents’ home at Southern Cross, a historic gold mining town on the eastern edge of the wheatbelt, located halfway between Perth and Coolgardie. From there, he went to a station in Coolgardie where he had an Uncle who took him under his wing. He worked there until Mr A.O. Neville, then the ‘Chief Protector of Aborigines’ tracked him down. Neville intended to take Poppa Cadley back to the mission, but the station’s owner told Neville that my grandfather was one of the best workers he had and asked if they could ‘keep’ him. Poppa Cadley ended up staying on that station until he was 18.

  He told Mum that he remembered his sister being five or six when she was taken from their mother, Lucy. She was another one of the many who were stolen.

  Lucy, my great-grandmother, was illiterate, but that didn’t stop her from going to the postmaster, the schoolmaster, the baker, the police officer, the priest, and everyone else she could think of to get them to write and ask permission for her to go and visit her daughter. That consent was never granted and they say she died from a broken heart. A letter of permission arrived the day she passed away.

  As a teenager, my grandfather was allowed to see his sister for 20 minutes a month. He went on to marry and eventually Mum’s four brothers came along. They had a tough time in Kalgoorlie – a hard place for Black people to grow up at that time. That’s why, when Mum was around 12 years old, they all packed up and headed over to Port Lincoln in South Australia.

  * * *

  Just as Mum had moved, she decided she needed to get me away from Kalgoorlie as well, and also out of Port Lincoln. Footy was going well: I was kicking goals and playing in rep teams, but Mum was getting worried about my behaviour off the field. She’d heard of a footy program that Phil Krakouer, from North Melbourne, was running out of Broadmeadows TAFE for Aboriginal players from right around the country. Mum told me and my cousins, Donald and Victor, about it and we decided that we wanted to go and join.

  Joining the program obviously meant moving to Melbourne, a big change for the family. We didn’t have a house there for starters. We spent our first few nights at Byron Pickett’s place in Sunshine. There was me, Donald and Victor, my mum, my two sisters, Aunty Tessa and
her four kids, and another cousin, Trevor. We camped on the floor in the garage. It’s just what you did, we didn’t complain. We got on with it. As a family we made sacrifices and hard choices to seal opportunities for each other. I was always around big family groups anyway, so I was used to the idea of living with everyone like that.

  The program felt like home right from the start because it was all Aboriginal people. Up until then, they were the only people I had been around, so it was exactly what I’d grown up with. All of us in that program became close and we’re still close today. It’s sometimes hard to explain how talking with Blackfullas is more comfortable for me. There’s an immediate sense of connection and shared experience. I remember one of the younger AFL boys coming over to our house and ending up staying for a couple of hours. He wasn’t from where my mob is from, but there was just that connection straight off, and we yarned for hours and became brothers.

  We did school classes as part of the program, and we’d spend part of each day learning skills like metalworking and woodworking – but I was always watching the time until I could get out on the field and play footy. I loved that program and it provided me with the support and a safe environment to progress in important ways off the field.

  The family found a three-bedroom home to rent in the north-west suburb of Glenroy. A whole heap of other boys who had come to Melbourne from interstate ended up in a house that the TAFE found for them. We had a big mob of mattresses on their lounge room floor and sometimes I’d stay there overnight too. We loved being together and it made it easier for all of us young fullas who had relocated to Melbourne. We all supported each other in many ways, whether it be financially or just having each others’ back with TAFE work. We even shared our playing gear, like footy boots and shorts. In those days we were responsible for our own meals. Charcoal chicken on bread with chips was a popular dish, with a plastic bag in the middle to chuck the bones in (my family still does that). At that time, though, I mostly ate a Blackfulla staple of Keen’s chicken curry and rice.

  At this early point in my career I mainly focused on what was in front of me. And that wasn’t necessarily making the AFL. In those days it was often just about living day to day. Things could be real tight financially. At different times we each had to call family back home – for me it was often my Aunty Tinker or Uncle Rock – and hit them up for whatever they could spare to help us all out with shopping or bills or whatever we were faced with. On the field, my focus was on playing my best footy for the boys that I was playing alongside. It was never about individual honours, it was about how I was contributing to the team, how we could be the best we could be. I was 15 years old and my mind was always in the moment.

  In 2002, I got the opportunity to have a run in the under 18s with the Templestowe Dockers. That meant I’d be playing with older guys again, but I was used to that from the games with my older cousins. Templestowe picked up Victor and my other cousins Tim Champion and Russell Carbine who had come across from Kalgoorlie and Port Lincoln for a visit but ended up staying. We made the grand final that year and I was surprised to get runner-up in the club Best and Fairest. I’d missed about six games because of family funerals back in Kalgoorlie. I ended up winning the overall Best and Fairest for the league, but unfortunately I didn’t get to go to the vote count because I was away for another funeral.

  The Oakleigh Chargers got wind of the news that myself and a few more 15-year-old brothers were all playing for the Dockers and invited us to train with them. They had assumed that because we were with the Dockers that we were within the same zone of eligibility. But the three of us were living in the Glenroy catchment, therefore outside the zone for the Chargers. The Calder Cannons, which was a club located in the north-west metro zone which covered Glenroy, then expressed interest in having me trial for them. I got the nod and as it turned out I was also the only Blackfulla on the team. For me, the footy felt very different from when I was playing with the boys from the TAFE course. Despite that, I loved what I was learning at Calder and I was more than happy to be playing footy however and whenever I could.

  The Cannons were based in Coburg, which was across town. This meant I couldn’t jump on a train or tram and had to rely on getting a lift to the ground with Aunty Tessa. One morning, I had to get to the oval early to catch a team bus to play Gippsland in the TAC Cup. Aunty Tessa said she’d drive me, but we only made it around one corner before she realised we were pretty much out of fuel. Aunty Tessa didn’t want to just leave the car in the street, but she didn’t want to chance getting it to a petrol station in case it conked out on the way. So we got together all the money we had – $20 – and decided I’d go alone in a taxi. Aunty Tessa drove back home while I waited around on the street, ready to hail down the next passing cab. But with time running out, I started knocking on doors to see if someone would let me use their phone to call one to come and collect me.

  I think it was the third door I knocked on that finally opened. Who knows why they let me – a complete stranger – in to use their phone, but they did. When the cabbie turned up, I had to tell him that I only had 20 bucks and to just get me ‘as close as possible’.

  ‘Okay, we’ll try and get you there,’ he said. Then he turned on the meter, and – bang! – $2.50 right away. I started to panic. I thought I was going to miss the bus for sure. My leg kept jiggling with nerves and I couldn’t sit still as I watched the meter tick over and my cash disappear dollar by dollar until finally it was all gone. We weren’t even that close to the oval – we were still a few kays away from it, actually. So I did the only thing I could do: I put my bag over my shoulder and ran hard. I reckon I got there in about 10 minutes. When I rounded the last corner and saw the bus, I finally slowed down, wandered up and casually hopped on. I actually played okay that day – I kicked five – but no one knew what I’d done to make it onto that damn bus.

  Heaps of kids in the community dream of growing up and playing AFL like the champions we grew up watching on TV. I was no different. I would watch Andrew McLeod play for the Adelaide Crows and pretend to be him while playing with my cousins, and at night I’d have dreams about playing footy. However, it wasn’t until my first year at the Calder Cannons Under 18s that the conversations started to centre on potentially fulfilling those childhood dreams.

  I didn’t understand the elite levels of the game – how structured and organised and professional the players are. In suburban footy, you just played. In the TAC Cup, though I was still playing with my mates, it was a totally different way of going about it.

  I was quite underage when I started in that competition and I remember thinking, at my first training session, ‘These boys are massive.’ I looked down at my skinny arms and thought, ‘Fuck me. How am I going to keep up with these massive dudes?’

  When I got picked for the team, I was handed the number nine jumper that David Rodan had worn and won back-to-back Best and Fairest awards for the entire competition. David’s name was on my locker, too. To this day, I consider myself privileged to have worn that guernsey.

  I still had no idea how big a deal the TAC Cup was. It was only when we got flown to play in Tasmania that I started to get a grasp on it. At that point, I still wasn’t completely comfortable with anyone in the team, so most of the time I stayed in my room while they went shopping and sightseeing.

  I still felt shame being the only Blackfulla in the team. I didn’t have much money either so when we went away on trips I couldn’t really do all the things everyone else was doing. My family did everything they could to support me, like paying for my fees and uniforms, but we felt the struggle a little when I needed extra money for trips away. I felt like this didn’t help with my bonding with teammates and sometimes I would spend hours alone on the trips away, hiding from people so they wouldn’t know I had no money.