The main hall of Bwgcolman primary school was full of Palm Islanders but it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The evening of 5 September was the first time Beautiful One Day – a play based on the true story of island resident Cameron Doomadgee and his 2004 death in police custody – had come to the place that inspired it.
A co-creator and performer, Rachel Maza, says when they were first devising the play in 2011 they quickly realised it was impossible to talk about the events of 2004 without first understanding the island’s grim history.
For most of the past century, she says, Palm Island was basically run like a prison and a “dumping ground for other uppity blacks. Any blackfella that stood up and said, ‘I want to have better pay,’ – or any pay at all, or better rations, better working hours. Basic human rights.
“History demonstrates any blackfella who stands up and doesn’t know his place is very quickly stepped on and made to shut up.”
Maza knows this all too well. Decades ago her grandfather was sent to the island from the Torres Strait for being a “troublemaker”, she says.
If there is one small blessing to emerge in the aftermath of Doomadgee’s death, it is that media attention shone a light on the living conditions on the island. Maza says in the five years she has been travelling back and forth to Palm Island she’s seen many new homes erected and other urgently needed infrastructure projects begin. Life there, she says, has improved.
Since Doomadgee’s death, the story of that day has been told a thousand times. First by witnesses, and then by police, lawyers, journalists and most famously in the award-winning nonfiction book The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper. But rarely, says Maza, “have Aboriginal people had control of the story”.
The makers of Beautiful One Day were committed to changing that and, among its list of Indigenous and non-Indigenous co-creators is Doomadgee’s niece, Kylie Doomadgee, and two other island residents, Magdalena Blackley and Harry Ruben.
There was something surreal, says Maza, about walking the same street on which Doomadgee was arrested, standing on stage before his sisters to tell their story, and doing so in the very school that in the week after Doomadgee’s death housed an additional 80 police (including members of Queensland’s special emergency response team), flown in from Townsville and Cairns to quell a riot. “It was such a heightened feeling, quite peaky,” Maza says.
The play is a Belvoir, Ilbijerri and version 1.0 theatres co-production and has already been before Sydney and Melbourne audiences. But makers faced a mountain of logistical and financial challenges before they could take it to a place as remote as Palm Island. A grant paid for half the show, crowdsourced donations the rest. Extra staff were pulled on board from the Ilbijerri office to accompany the cast and crew and build a custom-made stage with full lighting rigs in the school hall.
Maza reports a “big deep silence” settled over the audience when the performance began. “Everyone was sitting in the front sections of their seats, just listening. I’ve never heard an audience listen so deeply.” When it ended the silence collapsed into a sea of applause, hugs and a standing ovation.
Beautiful One Day is due for a five-show run at the Brisbane festival, marking its debut on the Queensland mainland. Maza says the state has a long history of remaining silent about Aboriginal issues. “A lot Queenslanders don’t know the stories of their own backyard.”
In 2007 a jury acquitted Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley of manslaughter and assault charges. A Palm Island local, Lex Wotton, was charged with inciting a riot and served two years of a six-year sentence. This year Wotton and his family launched a class action on behalf of the island against the state of Queensland.
“The community has never had a sense of justice and the fight goes on,” Maza says.
• Beautiful One Day is playing at Brisbane festival from 23 to 26 September
