Family ties

been like to feed a big family and keep the house running back in those days: you know it must have been hard for them. And as I said, the

Welfare – from what Shirl tells me – the welfare used to be down once every week and have complaints; people would ring up and say, Tem Mofatt’s are runnin’ around like blacks again, and all of this business. Dennis laughed remembering the fires they would light out the back of the house and all the kids running wild, ‘I don’t blame them for ringing up and saying, Tem Mofatt’s are at it again’. But he did blame the authorities for overlooking the love that held them together and only seeing overcrowding and neglect. Family ties

Dennis told me what he knew of his family’s backstory. He thought Mimmy was from Tursday Island in the Torres Strait, though he couldn’t pinpoint how he came to know that. As far as he knew his grandfather was a roustabout and Mimmy worked on an outstation. ‘From the stories Mimmy used to tell me, her and my father’s father ran away together and they came and settled in Crookwell and that’s where Dadda was born’. Dennis used the language of blood quantum that was current in that era to talk about his Aboriginal heritage, even though for him community connection was what defined his identity. ‘Dadda was quarter cast Aboriginal, his father was half cast Aboriginal’. Mimmy moved with Dadda down to the city where they moved between Redfern, La Perouse, Herne Bay, and Newtown. Dennis was a proud Indigenous man, but the strength he drew from his identity wasn’t always matched by acceptance. In the orphanage they told him he wasn’t Aboriginal but he insisted he knew who he was even at that young age. When he got out his older sister, Shirl, refused to speak about their heritage: ‘she knew more about things than I knew and she used to say to me all the time, Dennis, leave

The only photo of Mimmy, date unknown. Photo Courtesy of Tom Moffatt

it alone, leave it alone’. Dennis explained that it was common for Aboriginal families back then to say they weren’t Aboriginal:

‘cause goin’ back then you couldn’t get a government job, you couldn’t hold the endowment. Tere were a lot of things

you couldn’t do, so a lot of families would say, No, we’re not

Aboriginal. He said it could also be hard back then to find acceptance from the black community if you were a ‘white black fella’ – a fairskinned Aboriginal person. ‘Goin’ back in the 50s, 60s and that, if you weren’t at least half-caste you weren’t recognised; you weren’t accepted by the Aboriginal communities’. Dennis would say to himself, ‘not black, not white, where do I belong?’ Dennis felt that over the years things had changed and there was more acceptance now. ‘I’ve been accepted by most, but there are a few there that don’t ... But I proved who I was and where I come from’. Dennis meant not only that he had lived his life in Aboriginal community but also that he had an Aboriginal identity card to prove his heritage. ‘I grew up in the Aboriginal community in Redfern and Newtown and I always knew that I was diferent. I was accepted by them but a lot of times other people I’d meet they’d sort of …’. He trailed of, mimicking the grumble of skepticism he was met with by some. I came to know Dennis as a proud and loved regular at local Koori social events and programs in South-West Sydney. Tom had a diferent relationship to his Indigenous heritage. He had never known Dadda or Mimmy, let alone the formative experiences of family and culture that Dennis carried with him. ‘I don’t have the same connection with Dadda and Mimmy ‘cause I don’t know ‘em’, he told me. From the first time they met, Dennis had told him about their heritage. But the fact that others in the extended family weren’t convinced left Tom confused. No one in the family had been able to definitively trace where Mimmy was from. ‘You see that’s the hard part, because there’s no paper work. I don’t really know for 100% certain that it is. I’m one of those people where to see is to believe. Whereas Den has the memories of it’. In the time I’d known Tom, he had begun receiving teachings from an Aboriginal Elder on the Central Coast and visiting Country with

him. It had changed his way of thinking. Tom described himself as ‘anti-Aboriginal’ back in his younger days.

I just thought they were a pack of whingers; always pointing fingers at the whites. Learning about it, it’s trauma based. I sat and thought about it and it’s no diferent from me. Most of my stuf, I ended up on the streets because it was trauma based because of what had happened to me in my own home. I’ve come to understand now. He said these days he was more likely to be the one pulling someone up on the street for spouting racism. I asked Tom if he had come to identify as Aboriginal. ‘I understand that I’ve got it in me but, because I’m more on the white side than I am on the Indigenous side, I don’t walk around saying I’m a proud black fella’. He didn’t claim Aboriginal identity as his own, but he was sometimes still accused of being ‘just a white bloke wantin’ to be a black fella’. Tom had recently taken a step back from the teachings and an invitation to attend ceremony because he couldn’t commit to the time involved. Jude had been unwell and he didn’t like leaving her alone. ‘I can’t be four, five hours away out in the bush if something happens. ‘Cause when Jude had a stroke I wasn’t here so I’m a bit paranoid’. He was the type of person who didn’t sign up for something unless he could fully commit. Meeting Jude was something of a turning point for Tom. He didn’t give up the mischief right away, but he gradually changed his ways with a push from his wife. In their early marriage he’d still been in and out of prison, twice leaving Jude to manage a newborn on her own. She eventually gave him an ultimatum – keep it up and don’t bother coming home – and it was enough to shock him onto the straight and narrow. But it was the aggression that raged in Tom that changed most dramatically. Finding his wife and having his children revealed to him the kind of man he wanted to be. Jude had come out of an

Jude and Tom celebrating Tom’s 21st birthday, January 1979. He and Jude married in September that year. Photo courtesy of Tom Moffatt

abusive relationship and Tom didn’t want her to end up on the same path twice:

I think that was the trigger that actually did make me think about me violence because when she told me her story she was very open to me about the life she had been living with her first husband and I thought to myself, well I’m gonna have to do something here if I’m gonna hold onto this women. Jude still saw his violent side down at the pub, but eventually he stopped going and put an end to his heavy drinking. And he was determined not to treat his children like he had been treated by his adoptive father. ‘I always knew that if I had children of me own

(From lef) Pancho, Shirley, Dennis and his first wife Brenda, date unknown. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Certoma

I would never hit ‘em ‘cause I just remember what I went through’. When I asked Jude how Tom had changed, she said he’d mellowed out. Te couple were determined to make something of what they’d been through. Tom and Jude, who had her own experience of an abusive home and homelessness, became foster carers in the early 2000s. Tom had hated the idea of fostering but he could relate to the children.

Tere were a couple of times where they’d wanna call us mum and dad and I refused to let them call me dad. I’d say, I am not your dad, I’m only your carer. You’ve got a family out there. Te saddest day for Tom was when the kids would arrive on his doorstep; the happiest was when they went home to their families. Tom and Jude saw their role as carers as supporting the kids to find their way home: ‘at the end of the day all they want to do is get back with their mum and dad and you gotta fight with them to get ‘em back’. Meeting his first wife and daughter changed Dennis too. ‘I told her this is me; this is what I’ve done; this is what I do’. Being a ‘pretty straight shooter’ herself, Dennis’s wife wanted him to stop. ‘I remember tellin’ her, I’m too old to change. Tis is how I’ve been livin’ and it’s just what I do, it just comes natural for me’. But when his daughter Belinda came along he made a decision to ‘finish with it all’. While Tom seemed happy to leave his former self behind, it wasn’t so easy for Dennis. His mates would rib him and he missed the good times; the gambling and the rorts, the money and the status. ‘It was HARD for me too. ‘Cause I missed it’, he admitted. Dennis grew up to be like his Dadda in more ways than one. He inherited his stamina; he got mixed up in the same shifty business; and went on to have another family entirely. In his late 50s Dennis remarried and had five kids to his new wife, Aro. But that’s where their similarities ended. Dennis was committed to his kids, even though it could be tough being a parent to toddlers and teenagers at his age. He wanted them to know who they were and where they came from. Tey didn’t always match his enthusiasm, but he was happy that this story would be waiting for them when they were ready to seek it out.