If you’ve ever been to Woodford, you’ll know Uncle Noel Blair. He’s a kind of unofficial godfather of the festival and you’ll often hear him welcoming you to his country.
Now his voice is amplified in a newly released book. The Jinibara elder adds his own voice to the growing canon of truth-telling books from respected Queensland elders, setting the record straight on how our history is told.
Man on a Mission – From Cherbourg to Lake Gkula tells Uncle Noel’s story, starting from his time growing up at Cherbourg in the 1940s under “The Act”, Queensland’s notoriously repressive legislation that controlled the daily life of Indigenous people.
From there Uncle Noel worked on the roads, railways and farms before enjoying some success as a boxer on the tent-boxing circuit. These bouts would prepare him well for his time fighting for the rights of his people through the Aboriginal Legal Service in Brisbane during the Bjelke-Petersen era, including patrol work on the streets and in police watchhouses.
His social justice campaigns culminated in helping the Jinibara people become legally recognised as the traditional owners and custodians of their Country around Woodford.
At the launch of Man on a Mission at Brisbane’s Avid Reader Bookshop, Uncle Noel reflected on how critical that recognition of the Jinibara culture was after a lifetime of fighting bigotry.
“It’s never too late, is it?” he says. “I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time. My Dad used to talk about writing books and things like that. For me it was just part of the plan. I kept meeting people, I’d talk to them and they’d say, ‘you’ve got to write a book, you’ve got to write a book’, but I said, where do you start?”
Geoff Evans helped Uncle Noel tell his story as co-author, meticulously trawling through photos and documents that held the key to important recollections. They met on site at Woodford Folk Festival, where Evans was volunteering.
“His story is mostly about his working life on farms, in forests, on the railways, in an iron foundry in Maryborough or as a boxer and rugby league player,” Evans says. “He worked in Aboriginal organisations, in legal aid doing a lot of work in Musgrave Park where he actually lived, on-and-off for nine months, hiding in the trees from the cops when he was a young man.
“It was just an extraordinary story that was unfolding and our job was to find out what had happened in the last 20 years of his life and also to try and get Noel to talk more about things in his life that weren’t necessarily related to work. And so, the story got richer and richer.”
Publisher Matthew Wengert of AndAlso Books says Man on a Mission joins an impressive and growing collection of books giving a critically important perspective on Queensland history.
“I’m very proud to be associated with Uncle Noel’s story,” Wengert says. “It’s a chapter of the Cherbourg story coming from a different angle.
“The Ration Shed Museum in the Cherbourg is named after the Ration Shed where people used to get their rations, the flour and tea and sugar and blankets. The stories of people growing up in Cherbourg are very tough and many visitors to the Ration Shed Museum end up in tears at some point during their visits.”
Get InReview in your inbox – free each Saturday. Local arts and culture – covered.
Thanks for signing up to the InReview newsletter.
Wengert says books like Uncle Noel’s and Aunty Ruth Hegarty’s Is That You Ruthie? are important contributions to Australian cultural history.
“These books tell a personal story, but it also tells the community story. And the community story is a part of the Queensland story.”
It’s a tribute to Woodford Folk Festival that its organisers helped this book become a reality.
Getting Uncle Noel’s words into print is even more important now as his health becomes more precarious. At the book launch he sat in his wheelchair and spoke to each person in a long line waiting to meet him to sign their copy of his book – and to see that cheeky grin for which Uncle Noel is renowned.
Man on a Mission – From Cherbourg to Lake Gkula by Noel Blair with Geoff Evans, published by AndAlso Books and Woodford Folk Festival, $25
Support local arts journalism
Your support will help us continue the important work of InReview in publishing free professional journalism that celebrates, interrogates and amplifies arts and culture in South Australia.
Donate Here
