Literature11 - No Sugar [Davis]: About Jack Davis

You once smiled a friendly smile,
Said we were kin to one another, 
Thus with guile for a short while 
Became to me a brother. 
Then you swamped my way of gladness, 
Took my children from my side, 
Snapped shut the law book, oh my sadness 
At Yirrakalas’ plea denied. 
So, I remember Lake George hills, 
The thin stick bones of people.
Sudden death, and greed that kills, 
That gave you church and steeple.
I cry again for Warrarra men, 
Gone from kith and kind, 
And I wondered when I would find a pen 
To probe your freckled mind. 
I mourned again for the Murray tribe, 
Gone too without a trace. 
I thought of the soldier’s diatribe, 
The smile on the governor’s face.
You murdered me with rope, with gun 
The massacre of my enclave,
You buried me deep on McLarty’s run 
Flung into a common grave.
You propped me up with Christ, red tape, 
Tobacco, grog and fears, 
Then disease and lordly rape 
Through the brutish years. 
Now you primly say you’re justified, 
And sing of a nation’s glory, 
But I think of a people crucified - 
The real Australian story. 

Jack Davis, 1977.

Author, actor and activist Jack Leonard Davis was born on 11 March 1917 in Perth, Western Australia, the fourth child in a family of eleven. Both his parents, he recalled, were great storytellers. He spent his early childhood in the Western Australian mill town of Yarloop, where his father worked in the timber mill. After his primary schooling, Davis and his siblings were sent to the harsh Moore River Native Settlement. Its abject brutality would inform much of his later writing.

His hobby was reading his only book – an English dictionary. Words fascinated him; he wrote his first poetry at 14 and continued to scribble verse on scraps of paper. He also developed an interest in the local Nyungar Aboriginal language, which he eventually mastered, along with a deep knowledge of the tribal culture.

Live Performance of Australia, Hall of Fame