A return to Magnetic Island

In Townsville on a few days’ holiday I was determined to get to Magnetic Island where I’d last visited in 2011. The island looked tantalisingly close from our apartment balcony just off the Strand but the bay was breezy on the day we arrived.

The wind died down the following morning when we went to the nearby Sealink terminal to catch the passenger ferry with Mt Stuart glistening in the morning sunshine. More people got off the morning ferry from the island than were going out. Around 2500 people live there and it is an easy commute to the mainland for work and school.

It seemed to be only tourists heading the other way. We set off from the harbour for the speedy 20 minute trip 8km across Cleveland Bay to the island.

We soon arrive in Nelly Bay. Half of the island’s permanent population live here near the ferry terminal. The bay was reputedly named after Nelly Butler, daughter of Henry Butler who arrived on the island in 1877. Butler burned the coral lime and established the first boat service with the sailing boat “Hepzibah” (named for the Biblical wife of Hezekiah, King of Judah).

There is an hourly bus service on the island but we set off on foot towards Geoffrey Bay on Gabul Way which links Nelly Bay with Arcadia. The traditional people of Magnetic Island are the Wulgurukuba “canoe people”. About 200 people lived here in 1770 when Cook named the island because he mistakenly thought the island was interfering with the ship’s compass. In the Wulgurukuba dreaming story of how the region was created, Gabul was a giant carpet python who carved up the landscape from the Herbert River to Townsville. Geoffrey Bay is where scientists discovered in 1981 that many coral species reproduce on the same few nights each year.

The Gabul Walk ends at Arcadia and we had to take our chances on a narrow, busy and winding road up the hill towards the Forts Walk. Our relaxing day was starting to turn stressful especially at the corners where we had to be careful to avoid fast moving traffic. Later I found a walkway back but it wasn’t well signposted and even then did not completely cover the distance. Townsville Council need to address this for people who prefer to walk or cycle as the current system assumes everyone drives or catches the bus.

We relax again once we get to the Forts Walk and enjoy the calming view to Arthur Bay.

The walk is named for the Second World War forts complex built on the island. The command post was situated high on the island so it had the first view of any enemy activity directed towards the mainland.

These green fruits with yellow flower are from the Caribbean-native kapok tree (cochlospermum gillivraei). The tree is three to 12 metres high and deciduous in the dry season. The bright yellow flowers appear before the new leaves. The fruit is medicinal as an oral rinse.

Another newcomer on the island are the koalas. They were introduced to the island in the 1930s to protect them from threats on the mainland. They have thrived and there are almost 1000 of them. By day koalas rest in the eucalypt branches, feeding on leaves from late afternoon onwards. The nutrient-poor diet means koalas stay motionless for up to 20 hours a day.

It was hard work building this 2km track in 1942. Army engineers blasted a route to the top using explosives before a local Main Roads crew constructed it using jackhammers and a dozer. Along the track are “whoa boys” (bumps in the road) which divert the water off the track while the rock capping resists erosion in seasonal downpours.

The military camp existed from 1943 to the end of the war. There were separate quarters for men and women, and officers and other ranks. After the road was built in 1942, battery personnel were redeployed from Fort Lytton in Brisbane and placed in tents until the buildings were ready. There was a water pump and sewerage system with power supplied by five petrol generators. Commanding Officer Major Arnold Nicolle said they saw little action “apart from the occasional donnybrook with the 50 Americans stationed on the island”. Above is the remains of the mess which had a fireplace and support for a 44-gallon drum. Wine bottles marked “1943” and beer bottles were discovered in a nearby rocky hiding spot.

Critical to the fort’s operation were the two US Army 155mm guns, each weighing 10 tonnes, sited at separate emplacements. The gun pallets were hauled up the beach over logs and towed into position by tractors.

The artillery command post controlled operations including searchlights and radar. It housed a depression range finder and a long telescope to measure the range of a target. Plotters from the Australian Women’s Army Service used the readings to calculate details and communicate orders to battery command on Castle Hill on the mainland. During the war the building was concealed by netting and concrete rocks.

From the top we get a glimpse of Horseshoe Bay and see why it got its name. Horseshoe Bay is a popular tourist spot on the island with watersports and cafes and bars by the beach.

Near the command post is a second tower, this one a three-storey signal station. Run by the Australian Navy, it used light and flag communications. The big signal light was visible from Palm Island, 60km north. Standing 230m above sea level it had a 300 degree ocean view and could monitor all shipping in Cleveland Bay. Challenged ships had to respond with the code of the day. Nowadays the roof houses UHF and VHF radio repeaters.

Florence Bay is another secluded bay on the east coast of the island accessible by one of many walks in the area.

The view back to the command post from the signal station with Cape Cleveland in the background.

Mount Cook rises 493 metres out of the Coral Sea and is the highest point on the Magnetic Island. On June 6, 1770, Cook wrote in his journal: This bay which I named Cleveland Bay appear’d to be about 5 or 6 Miles in extent every way. the East point I named Cape Cleveland and the West Barren Head. Magnetical head or Isle as it had had much the appearence of an Island and the Compass did not travis well when near it. They are both tolerable high and so is the Mainland within them and the whole appear’d to have the most rugged, rocky and barren Surface of any we have yet seen however it is not without inhabitants as we saw smooks in several place in the bottom of the Bay.”

It was time for me to head down to the bay for a swim at Alma Bay near Arcadia. There is healthy fringing reef that follows along the rocks on either side of the bay with a large fish population that can be seen while snorkeling.

I decided on a walk across the top of the island to get back to the ferry at Nelly Bay. At 6.5km and a rough surface on a hot afternoon, it was a bit of a route march especially as I only had an hour and a half to make the ferry.

The walk was mostly in the trees but there was the occasionally view of the shoreline through the foliage. We regretted we only went for a day trip. Next time we’ll spend more time on the island.

Fear: Trump in the White House

Less than a month out from the US presidential election and the polls are predicting a comfortable win for Joe Biden with a ten point lead and just 25 days to go. There is no precedent for a candidate recovering that much to win in such short time but as 2016 showed us ruling out Donald Trump is fraught with hazard. Maybe COVID can do what Hillary Clinton and bring Trump down with would-be elderly supporters in the key state of Florida deserting him as they watch their friends die and worry about their own survival in the face of federal incompetence. Bob Woodward’s recent book Rage charts how in private Trump knew exactly how bad the pandemic was while ignoring or downplaying it in public.

But I’ve just finished reading Woodward’s earlier book (2018) Fear: Trump in the White House which charts how Trump got elected in 2016 despite seeming in a hopeless position a few months out from the election. Unlike Rage, Trump did not consent to be interviewed for Fear, but Woodward cobbled together a compelling story based on hundreds of hours of interviews with many other key participants, mostly on “deep background” which meant the material could be used but not directly attributed to the source.

In August 2016, three months out from the election, Trump was the Republican nominee but his campaign was in deep trouble 10-20 points behind Clinton with unnamed sources close to him saying he was bewildered, exhausted, sullen, gaffe-prone and in trouble with donors. Trump had called Mexicans “rapists” and the RNC was looking at shutting off funding for Trump to save Senate candidates. Desperate to change tack, Trump turned to Steve Bannon.

Bannon was the chief of right-wing Breitbart News with a strong America First focus and a supporter of Trump from the wings. But now he was front and centre, brought in to replace the hapless campaign manager Paul Manafort. Bannon’s strategy was simple: Forget Trump – put the focus on Hillary Clinton. Bannon’s three main themes would be to stop mass immigration, to bring back manufacturing jobs, and to get America out of endless foreign wars. Bannon said Clinton couldn’t defend against these themes. “Just stick to that,” he advised Trump on their first meeting.

Bannon knew Trump had another advantage – he didn’t sound like a politician. Trump had built a movement – he sounded authentic and angry in comparison to Clinton and the campaign would put up Kellyanne Conway as the feisty front for the daily news. Conway told Trump people wanted specifics and they also wanted assurance the businessman could deliver on his promises. Unlike the RNC but like Bannon, Conway believed Trump could win the election.

Bannon’s first day on the job involved dealing with another scandal, as the New York Times showed $12.7m in payments to Manafort from a pro-Russian Ukrainian party. That was the official end for Manafort and Bannon got to work on RNC chair Reince Preibus who had control of the money. Preibus had learned from Obama to rebuild the RNC into a data-driven organisation staffed with armies of volunteers. They identified hidden Trump voters across the battleground states that would be critical to win the electoral college.

Bannon’s three phase approach was to halve the gap to five points before the first debate, then avoid too much damage in the actual debates against a seasoned debater, and finally use Trump’s own money in the final weeks to sway the swing states: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. On August 19, 2016 as Manafort left the building, it all seemed like a giant fantasy.

Yet Trump did gradually claw back the lead and Clinton did not land a hammer blow in the first debate. Endless rallies had turned Trump into a rock star. Then on October 7, ahead of the final debate the Washington Post published a hammer blow. “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005” The story had audio outtakes from NBC’s Access Hollywood with Trump making crude remarks like “Grab them by the pussy”. Trump issued a brief statement calling it “locker room banter” and said Bill Clinton had said far worse to him on the golf course. But donors dived for cover, VP candidate Pence had distanced himself from the remarks, with prominent Republicans talking of him running for president with Condi Rice as VP. Even Priebus said “it’s over.”

But Bannon refused to bend. “Your supporters will still be with you,” he told Trump. The comparison with Clinton was handy and instead of apologising they needed to go on the attack. Trump took to Twitter (where he called himself the “Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters”) and tweeted: “The media and establishment want me out of the race so badly – I WILL NEVER DROP OUT OF THE RACE, WILL NEVER LET MY SUPPORTERS DOWN! #MAGA” and then at the last minute cancelled an ABC interview ahead of the debate as he refused to read a prepared apology speech written by Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie and instead went off to the debate where four women were present that said they were attacked by Bill Clinton.

Bannon did his bit with Breitbart writing stories about the Clinton accusers all day and Trump dutifully tweeted them all. When asked about the tape in the debate, he again referred to it as “locker room talk” but was nothing compared to ISIS “chopping off heads” and he would deal with them if elected. He pointed out Bill Clinton had done far worse and named two of the former president’s accusers in the audience. “When Hillary…talks about words I said 11 years ago, I think it is disgraceful and she should be ashamed of herself.” The moderator had to interrupt the applause to allow Clinton to speak.

It worked. The religious right vote closed ranks behind Trump. In swing state North Carolina conservative women chartered a bus urging women to vote for him. “The evangelical vote is out. We’ve got this,” Bannon was reassured when he visited the state. They also used Mike Pence well with numerous appearances in the swing states where they urged him to campaign on local issues as if he was running for governor.

Still on election day, the New York Times gave him just a 15pc chance of winning and exit polls suggested a Clinton victory. But all along it seemed as if the US was performing its own version of “shy Tory factor” and people were lying to pollsters about their true voting intentions. Clinton’s problems were exposed quickly as voting came in and African American and Latino turnout was down. Ohio was was called for Trump at 10.36pm, Florida 15 minutes later, then North Carolina and Iowa on midnight.

Obama called Clinton to say another uncertain outcome like 2000 would be bad for America and advised her to concede early. When Wisconsin was called for Trump at 2.29am, he had won the college, and improbably, the presidency. Clinton conceded shortly after. Bannon was convinced Trump was stunned having no idea he would win. “He never thought he would lose, but he didn’t think he would win. There’s a difference.”

That difference was quickly exposed with a total lack of a transition team. They had 4000 jobs to fill in 10 weeks and no one to manage it. If the election was chaotic, then it was only going to get worse. The rest of the book looks at the tensions in the White House between Trump and his family on one side (daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kuschner had free reign of the building and did not report to the chief-of-staff but had direct access to the new president) and the establishment Republican figures they needed to fill positions in the new administration.

The biggest clash was with Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn who Trump appointed head of the White House National Economic Council. Cohn wanted tax reform and less regulation as did Trump but Cohn was a globalist who believed in free trade which Trump hated. Cohn spent most of his time trying to talk Trump out of reneging on NAFTA and the free trade agreement with South Korea. Trump hated trade deficits and and try as Cohn might he couldn’t convince Trump they were good for America. For the first 12 months of his presidency the free traders relied on the fact Trump kept no task list and as long the matter did not land on his desk – or was discussed on the news channels he watched constantly – he would forget about it.

Eventually they ran out of time to convince Trump on trade. He wanted tariffs. Cohn buried him in data showing how tariffs on imported steel would hurt America. He showed him the tiny amount of revenue it raised when George W Bush imposed them for similar reasons. He told him tens of thousands of jobs would be lost in industries that consumed steel. Look, Trump said, if it doesn’t work, we’ll undo it. Cohn said that might not be possible, “it either works or you go bankrupt”. But he knew Trump had gone personally bankrupt six times and bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Or as Trump himself put it, real power is fear.

Trump’s exasperated advisers had to deal with the back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring and the “fake news” indignation but none of them, nor the media that reported on them, could bring them to say to the president, as Woodward said in his final crude line in the book: “You’re a fucking liar.” Joe Biden didn’t swear but perhaps that was the one line about Trump that did cut through from their chaotic debate. Four years in, everyone knows Trump is a liar.

Pattie Lees’ Question of Colour

Pattie Lees.

A few weeks ago I went to Mount Isa’s Injilinji Aged Care facility to interview CEO Pattie Lees about her autobiography A Question of Colour: My Journey to Belonging which she co-wrote with her son Adam C. Lees. Pattie was a member of the Stolen Generation and in 1958 aged 10 she was taken from her mother and placed in institutionalised care for eight years, the last six years of that in Palm Island. I hadn’t been able to get hold of her book when I met her but I knew a bit about Palm Island’s troubled history and hoped to do justice to her story.

The foreword to the book was written by former prime minister Kevin Rudd who said Pattie’s was a story we all should be more familiar with, calling the legacy of the stolen generation “a blemish on our nation”. As PM, Rudd invited Lees to attend his 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generation. Lees turned it down in respect for those members of the stolen generation who weren’t invited. Rudd accepted that and noted that Lees had walked two conflicting worlds of protectionism and assimilation before rising to represent her people at the UN.

I didn’t know any of this. The lede of my article was that a new book by a prominent Mount Isan “looks back on the life of the stolen generation and growing up on Palm Island”. This was true to a point and Lees and her son praised my article after it came out. But I couldn’t wait to read the book to find out more. When I did, I found I had missed the central point, the conflict in her life caused by the question of the title. The Queensland government made decisions about the lives of Pattie and her siblings based on obsessive and archaic definitions of colour and race. Lees did not have the freedom to choose her own identity growing up.

Pattie’s best childhood memories are of her first 10 years when she lived in Cairns with her Torres Strait Islander mother Agnes, two brothers and a sister. Her Irish father was married to someone else and an irregular visitor. The kids were blind to the colour of their mother’s skin, she was just “mum” but was a beautiful singer from Mer (Murray Island) where Eddie Mabo came from. As well as Torres Strait, she had Melanesian, Filipino and Aboriginal ancestry. Agnes was schooled on Thursday Island and moved to Babinda after marrying John Janke. They had one son, also John, and they separated in 1945.

Patricia’s father was Keron Patrick Glendon, a married man with 10 children when he met Agnes. They lived in a menage a trois with his wife Emma who turned a blind eye to their dalliance until Agnes became pregnant. Although Emma left Keron, he never formally moved in with Agnes though he fathered four children with her. Instead he married another women leaving Agnes to bring up the family.

Grief stricken, she took to alcohol. She played cabaret at pubs to earn money but her drinking left less time to look after the family. She married Norwegian Kaj Eggertsen, had one child Elin and they both drank heavily. The children were unsupervised for long periods. Oldest child Pattie was “Little Big Girl” and a defacto parent for younger siblings. Oldest son Terry was constantly in trouble and they had trouble putting food on the table. In 1957 the couple were charged with neglect and in 1958 the police intervened again.

Pattie was 10 when she and three older children were locked up at Cairns police station. Police were empowered to take neglected children into protective custody without a warrant, pending a court hearing. Agnes appeared in court without a lawyer. The hearing relied entirely on hearsay evidence from a local constable who said Terry had broken into a neighbour’s house and stole crackers. At the house he found Terry feeding baby Elin with no mother around and he took the children into custody (Elin was taken to hospital). He said the mother was addicted to alcohol and was often arrested for drunkenness.

The magistrate removed the children from her care and declared them wards of state until 18. They were taken by train to Townsville State Children Receiving Depot while Queensland’s Children’s Department figured out what to do with them. They “belonged to neither race” but being “comparatively light-skinned” they weren’t sent to Palm Island. The Depot was a home for children deemed “neglected” or “uncontrollable” and the four children stayed there, enrolled at school while authorities sought foster parents. Johanne was fostered early and rarely saw her siblings again. Misbehaving Terry was taken away on a “picnic” and didn’t return to the Depot, taken instead to Palm Island.

Pattie looked after younger brother Michael for almost two years at the Depot when they too were removed to Palm Island in 1960. Unaccompanied on Palms they went to the police station where police thought had gone to the wrong place and should have gone to Magnetic Island. “You’re a lot whiter,” the sergeant said, “You shouldn’t be here.” But here they were. They were escorted to island superintendent Roy Bartlam’s office. Bartlam’s power was absolute on the island and his reputation today is poor because of the 1957 rebellion but Lees says he treated her with respect.

She and Michael were separated, she to the girls dorm and him to the boys where he was reunited with Terry. The 12-year-old Pattie was doubly disadvantaged, in Palms because she was deemed too black and ostracised in the dorm because she was deemed too white. All aspects of her life were controlled. She could not cross to the whites only Mango Avenue without authorisation, she was punished for failing to obey orders and could not leave the island without permission. Aboriginal people were expected to work 30 hours a week in exchange for accommodation and poor food rations. It was a womb to tomb experience for many.

Pattie was assigned to cooking, laundry, washing and yard work. She was constantly supervised and bad behaviour was not tolerated with lights out at 9.30pm. “We led silent lives”, she wrote. Pattie needed to convince her bullying dorm sisters she was a “proper blackfella” before they would accept her. One sympathetic girl rubbed soot on her face to make her darker. It worked, and she started making friends.

It was tougher still in the boys dorm where Terry reported being beaten, set upon and sodomised within a month of arrival. He escaped in 1962 as indentured labour to a cane farm near Innisfail. Pattie earned pocket money cleaning the house of a white assistant and also discovered the house’s library where she devoured books.

Aged 14 in 1962 she met Father Cassian Double, the Island’s unorthodox new resident Franciscan friar. During her adolescence Double was her surrogate mother buying her first bra and educating her on all matters female. Double became a guiding force helping her endure the agony of separation from her mother. She did well at school and got a scholarship to boarding school in Charters Towers aged 14.

Lees struggled to adjust to the freedoms of the mainland and her scholarship ended abruptly after a disastrous incident. On the weekend she was reading a book under a tree when the college principal took the book off her and start hitting her with it. Lees hit back and she was forced to leave college and return to Palms. Deeply ashamed she worked hard and got a clerical role in the island’s main office. In 1966 she saw a full page ad for the navy. Wanting to “roam and explore at will” she applied and forgot about it. The same year, aged 18, she left the island to go to Cairns to look for her mother.

She found her father first who said her mother had moved to Bloomfield River, 170km north. There Pattie and her mother had an emotional reunion after eight years. “Our years apart, the hurt, the pain, the loneliness endured without her, my sheer hunger for her presence all collided in one single moment.”

Pattie stayed at Bloomfield River for several months as she and her mother made up for lost time. She left when she found out her Navy application was successful and she enlisted three months after the 1967 referendum changed the laws relating to Aboriginal people. She trained up at HMS Cerberus in Victoria where fellow recruits had no idea of Aboriginal issues and assumed Palm Island was a paradise. Her comrades were shocked when she was not served in a Nowra pub but having come from Queensland with its segregation and colour bars, it seemed “no big deal for her”.

In the Navy, Pattie met the love of her life Terry Lees, who had similar qualities to Father Cassian. They dated and married in 1969, forcing Pattie to leave the Navy. They lived in Canberra until Terry’s insurance business went under before returning to Cairns. In their five years together they had four children. But she couldn’t escape the ghosts of Palms.

Queensland’s Department of Native Affairs pettily chased her to repay the $20.39 advance on a new dress and other items while employed in the Palm Island main office. Her tally of receipts showed she owed $20.19 and she paid that back explaining the 20c difference. In the years that followed the Department sent more letters demanding the 20c. They also hassled her brother Michael for five years over a $5.44 debt.

In Cairns she found out she had another brother John from her mother’s first marriage. She also later discovered her sister Elin was still alive. Husband Terry was promoted to be an area manager for Carlton and United Breweries in Mount Isa. Knowing no-one in the mining town she reunited with fellow Palm Islanders while Terry became well known for his Sports Time program on local television, his work as 4LM manager and his work with Rotary managing the growing Mount Isa Rodeo.

Pattie’s mother came to Mount Isa where she died at Christmas 1977, “a brilliant and talented woman but few of her dreams were fully realised”. But she spurred Pattie on. Pattie found documents that showed the efforts her mother went to, to find her children after they taken. “We were simply caught in the scrutiny that befell her domestic situation”, Pattie wrote.

Her family’s story featured in the 1997 Stolen Generation report Bringing Them Home. Pattie dedicated her personal and professional life to addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. She was CEO of an Indigenous legal services group for 17 years and an ATSIC councillor for seven years. She was a delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights draft declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2000 and also attended the UN General Assembly special session on women.

Pattie identifies as an Australian of mixed-race ancestry. She says that when the First Fleet arrived “one part of her mob greeted another part on the beach”. She says identity is shaped by the need, desire and necessity to belong. She finishes the story with a deeply emotional trip to her mother’s homeland Mer she took with son Adam in 2014. They visited the graves of family relatives and also the grave of Eddie Koiki Mabo. There her mother’s spirit was finally free to rest among the wind, the sea and the stars. The work of “Little Big Girl” was finally done.