Norman Baird, the Bama Digger

The connection I have with Wujal Wujal comes from my grandmother, from my Guru Yalanji side, the late Ivy Bird. When I create and when I dance, I feel a deep connection to my ancestors, to my country, to my spiritual beliefs. It awakens me when I hear music, when I hear the sounds of the didgeridoo, also the clapsticks. It comes into my body. It lights a fire, a passion, and that's where I draw my strength on, especially if I'm feeling down or if I have stuff going on in the outside world. When I close my eyes and I listen, I see movement and that brings me back to earth. I know that Grandad Norman was a well-respected man, a war hero. He was a respected leader of the community. He was a teacher. He was a mentor and he was a father. He was a father to some beautiful children. So now that it is the anniversary of World War I, I thought this is the perfect time to sort of retrace the steps, go back up on country, find out a bit more about Grandad Norman and see what we come up with. Norman was the son of Robert Baird, a Scottish man who came to Cooktown to seek his fortunes and Dinah, an Aboriginal woman from the region. Norman was the oldest of two boys. He was raised bilingually and biculturally. He was educated. His father wanted him to have the best of both worlds and he gave those two boys, Charles and Norman, a good, solid education, and I think that really speaks volumes in terms of what Norman achieved in his life. So Norman's father was the mayor of Cooktown at some point and he moved to the China Camp region for the prospects of becoming a tin miner. It was very unusual at the time for white men to raise their Aboriginal half-caste children, so he was an unusual father in that regard. He went off to China Camp, started tin mining, set up a little industry there, but unfortunately he died when Norman was quite young and that had a big impact on Norman. With the death of his father and later on his father's close friends, I think Norman lost that ability to maintain that anchor in the white community where he really felt that he belonged. He wrote a lot of letters to newspapers about his father being a pioneer. He was very proud of his father's pioneering endeavours and it quite upset him. It was a very interesting district because that was one of the last areas for the frontier. You're looking at the 1870s. There had been, of course, people going up, Europeans going up into that area before. You also had the Melanesian influence from the north, so there's a lot of cultural contact going on, but it really starts with the Han Expedition of 1872 and that sparked rushes up into the Cape York and the pastoralists were moving up about the same time because finally they had a market for their beef. So you find that the Aboriginal people were fairly quickly absorbed into mining and pastoralism. Aboriginal people were obviously on the bottom of the social scale. They were perceived to be lower even than the South Sea Islanders that came across. They weren't allowed to marry, have any sort of freedoms that normal people would expect to have. They were pretty much on the bottom rung of society and a lot of that is the values that Australia had about Aboriginal people. He was a very strong advocate of Bama. He was always pushing the pen for Bama cause. So what do I call him, Papa? Boy. He was a muser. He could bend a saw and play the saw. He could play a guitar. He can play anything. I heard him play the piano one time too. He was multi-instrumentalist if you like to say so. I played this one here, Squeezebox. We were all taught by him. He said, I've got to teach you something like this. You've got to be with me 24 hours. Pick it up easy? Yeah. Papa tried to teach me guitar. I can't get it. I'm not good at instruments. We used to walk with him down to Daintree. He'd have little stops along the way. We'd have dinner camp for a couple of nights. Always story. He was a golden one. He always was a king around. And you followed him wherever he went. He used to come down to Daintree. He had them shotguns. Empty shotguns. He used to have a couple of them full of gold. But yeah, a good memory, fun memory. Always. Google Bama too. He'd talk Google Bama all the time. He was an expert English man. Talk both words. You see that beautiful writing when he was young. Ian Idris came up to Cooktown and spent some time. He met Norman and Charles Baird. And I think they all got caught up in that spirit of fighting for their country. As I said, Norman's dad was a pioneer. And he very much had that pioneering spirit. And very much felt he was an Australian, first and foremost. So he got caught up in that whole fighting for your country and protecting the rights of Australians. That's what Norman believed. That's why he went to the war. So what we've got here, we've got two brothers. Both tried to sign up in 1915, just before Gallipoli. They then are knocked back or rejected by the Australian Defence or the AIF. They then are called up. One's called up in early 1917. Both aren't attached to a unit. Norman was then picked up by the AIF to refill the Australian troops in France in late 1917. So Norman served on the Western Front, which would have been horrific by anyone's standards. And his brother Charles served in Egypt. When they came home, they were the forgotten people. Like most of the Aussie diggers in the First World War and the Second World War were just forgotten people. The white community back at home weren't very welcoming of him. And there was discussion that he shouldn't even have a welcome home party. Pretty standard practice I think it was in those days when returned servicemen would arrive home. That they were given parcels of land. That they were given a welcome home celebration. Norman wasn't afforded any of those opportunities. There was correspondence written to say that he shouldn't even... He had more of the black fella in him than the white fella and that he wasn't deserving. Which is incredible to think that a young man could give up his life to go and fight in World War I. And not even receive a token gesture of a welcome home party. He was probably disappointed that he expected more when he got home. He basically went back to tin mining. He had his two girls after that time. He wanted to basically be self-sufficient and live a life in his community and raise his family. Unfortunately that was very difficult. Because he was under the constant threat of being removed. The two girls were removed by missionary Biddle. And they were kept in the Bloomfield but they were very much under his control. Despite Norman's attempts to keep the girls. His son held a son, Joe. Jimmy Bedfather. They sent him to Yarraba. Went through a lot of political jargon to get him back. To get him back home again. And he finally did get him back. Joe back. That was his eldest son. He fought for the rights of the Koogeelangi people. And he gave up so much. And he was prepared to compromise his own freedom to defend Aboriginal people. And that was his lifelong goal I think. To record culture. To record heritage. And to preserve the lifestyle of Koogeelangi people. He's also teaching bummers up there to duck and weave. The Aboriginal people. How to get away from the coppers when they come and what not. And sticking up for them. All the bummers. The old grannies talked about how they used to do the bolt up in the rainforest. Because they wouldn't take their horses or cars into the rainforest. I think the hardest thing for Norman was to see how many children were being removed. And to see the impact it was having on everyone else's lives. It definitely impacted on him. But the evidence that's in his writings is that he was very concerned about it. And he wanted to do what he could. Because the difference with Norman is he was educated. He could write. That was a very unusual quality in a half-caste Aboriginal man in that era. So he tried to use that skill to improve the lot off the bummer. And I'm sure he did succeed. Because that's why the authorities kept trying to remove him. Yeah, he was Aboriginal, but he was Australian. And he would share in the same experience as every other Australian at that time. So when World War II came around, he wanted to do his bit for the country. I think he was torn between the two cultures that he had. But he very much loved and respected his father and his father's culture. And he wanted to be a part of that. But he also loved and respected his mother's culture. He wasn't happy with what was going on. But he wanted to do his bit to protect his people and his country. So he enlisted in World War II. And he was subsequently investigated as a spy. Nobody knew about it. I guess it's something pretty much like the AGO today. The spotter, they call it. And he'd walk from one end of this place up there, Cape Tribulation, snarky and back and forth. You'll notice there he had a radio. He'd contact the armed forces who was going past the plane. In his office down there, I used to go down there. And he used to have that office padlocked and locked. But I used to go in there sometime when he was there. And he had photographs of airplanes, ships, and everything on there, you know, for identification. When they fly over. Yeah, for identification, you know. And he used to report back. What he'd seen. Yeah, what he'd seen. But all his paperwork and stuff, you know, he'd have it locked away. He had a safe. You don't touch when you go in there. Well, he never let anybody go in there. But the only thing that was on the wall was pictures of airplanes and identification of ships and stuff like that, you know. He even went down to numbers and, you know, even signatures and everything on there. I used to look at all the stuff, you know, I think. And he had a lot of muggins there too, you know, muggins. Guns. Lots of guns in there. How old were you? Me? I was only about 11, I think. I was 12. I think Norman struggled with being in the middle. He was very much in the middle of both the cultures. And he struggled with that a bit. He wanted to help Mama, and he wanted to make their life better. But I think he was frustrated because of the way welfare dependency works. People get caught up in a system that's not actually good for them. So I think he was quite frustrated with that. But he was a bush boy who'd grown up in the bush. But because of education, he got to see the world, admittedly in war-torn circumstances. But, you know, he very much valued that ability to write and read. And I think those skills helped a lot of people, his own people. I don't think Norman ever had his freedom. Up until the last of his days, he was living in a little caravan in poverty, in Wujal Wujal, which is very sad. You know, he died in poverty. He was buried in an unmarked grave. There was no recognition of what he'd done. But the problem was the community didn't even understand what he'd done because of the secrecy that's involved in the circumstances around which he operated in. It came from an idea from the local justice ladies. They wanted a recognition of our people from around Wujal and surrounding areas. It represents all the people in this area that fought in World War I and II and other wars, but mainly the two Baird brothers. So I'm so glad that I came to do this trip and find out more and to talk with the families and reconnecting with them in regards to this personal story about Norman, speaking with family and learning more about what type of person Norman was, how smart, how talented. He was a musician. He was a teacher. He was a mentor. He was a leader. And he was a father and a grandfather. He was someone who was a Google bummer, but also very literate. He lived in both worlds. He lived in the bummer way and the white way. It helps me to understand why sometimes I feel a connection. I feel the same way.