Sometimes we walked in silence; at others, one of us keened. Sometimes we quietly talked. It was around midnight in the Kimberley coastal town of Broome, Western Australia. We were both living and working in Broome for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Kate Auty, a lawyer and historian, was Patrick Dodson’s legal advisor. Patrick was the first Indigenous person in Australia to be appointed a Royal Commissioner. A Yawuru man, he insisted that the Royal Commission Office be based in Broome, his homeland, rather than in the state’s capital city of Perth. I felt privileged to be Patrick’s senior researcher.
We worked tirelessly on difficult stories, experiences, and custodies — the slow violence of so many of these. Western Australia represented the highest number of deaths in custody in any state or territory. We were confronted by each shocking death, for the loved ones left behind, and the harsh patterns of custodial experience that were starting to emerge. For all of us, across the state, territory, and national Commission, our multilayered role was to identify injustices, unravel racisms, explore personal, local, regional, health, poverty, housing, and educational histories, and ask why and how each person had died in the custody of a police or prison cell, or in a hospital. What could and should have been different.
That memorable night when Kate and I walked for so long in Broome was noticeably different from others we had taken. On those occasions, as colleagues and housemates, we talked through so much of our daily research, possible explanations and findings, parallels across jurisdictions, prejudiced policies and laws, uneven reporting, social, cultural, economic and emotional complexities, the next round of meetings, and so much more. Our conversations also fostered the extent to which so many people in wider Australian society had limited understanding of Australia’s colonial history, the importance of making more fully known the tragedy of that history and its enduring long-term impact. Many years later, a conversation and deepened historical research kindled at that time led to Kate publishing the forensically investigated and written O’Leary of the Underworld: The Untold Story of the Forrest River Massacre (Black Inc Books, 2023). The publication included a strong endorsement on the cover from Patrick Dodson: “It’s our place, and we all need to know the awfulness of what happened here…”
It was around 10 pm Broome time on that memorable night when I had an unexpected call from my sister in Melbourne. She told me our father had died. It was such sorrowful news: my much-loved father, always so gentle, smart, and wise. We shared an intellectual and empathetic closeness that I’d hoped would continue for more years than he obviously had.
The phone call ended. Kate heard my unmuffled crying. She recognised the sorrow, the grieving rawness of losing one’s parent — a parent who I sensed had gone “gentle into that good night.” I knew then, as now, that my father had not raged “against the dying of the light,” as lines in the beauty of Dylan Thomas’s renowned poem Do not go gentle into that good night eloquently encapsulate. Kate somehow got me out of our rented house into the then-dark streets of Broome. Frangipanis scented the darkness, stars illuminated the skies, and a welcome soft breeze helped to console me.
Sometimes we walked in silence; at times, one of us keened. At others, we quietly talked. It was the long walk along often-dusty roads and highly vegetated byways that helped concentrate mind, heart, and body; it was also Kate walking alongside, listening and talking when it most poignantly mattered, being silent when there was a need. Although grief for a parent was not yet known by Kate, it unmistakably resonated.
We walked at least ten kilometres from our house to the ocean, to Cable Beach, then turned around and walked back into the Broome township and the place we called home. Lit by the moon guiding our steps, comforted by an unspoken friendship. My father’s death at its catalyst heart.
'It was not only for my much-loved father; it was also for all those Indigenous men and women who had died in custody, often on their own, without loved ones nearby, and a long way from Country.'
Pots of hot tea alternating with glasses of cold Guinness helped soothe us when we returned home. A restless sleep followed. When I woke early the next morning, I felt carefree for less than five seconds. Then a raw sorrow hit me. My father had died last night. I knew he had not died alone; family and hospital nursing staff were around him.
My weeping started again. I realised then, as now, that it was not only for my much-loved father; it was also for all those Indigenous men and women who had died in custody, often on their own, without loved ones nearby, and a long way from Country. It was also for those who did not have the opportunity or responsibility to be present and express their love and care for family when death came hauntingly close and took hold.
The next day, I travelled to Melbourne for my father’s funeral. Family and friends celebrated and mourned his life and his passing. I returned to Broome, and we all continued to work incredibly hard on trying to document and resolve so many of the unjust, tragic, obvious, and less-known circumstances of those who had not gone gentle into that good night, and sometimes in resistance and rage, “against the dying of the light.”
My father’s life and death continue to be evocatively present. So too are the lives and deaths of those who have died in custody, before and since the Royal Commission, as are the families of those left behind. High custodial rates continue, deaths in custody continue, and families and friends left behind continue to grieve.
A reality also left behind is that not all of the 339 recommendations made by the National Royal Commission to the Federal Government in February 1991 have been fully or widely implemented across the nation. There is little irony to be found in noting that Recommendation 1 of the detailed 339 recommendations observed that if all of these were not implemented by state, territory, and federal governments, little change would evolve. That a newly elected Northern Territory Country Liberal Party Government has ruthlessly decided children as young as ten can be arrested and charged with “criminal responsibility” tragically evidences not only a failure to listen and learn, but also how far we have not come.
Aboriginal deaths in custody undoubtedly generate an anguished harshness and uncertainty for far too many families. Alongside moments of strong resistance and allied support, these uneven circumstances were further amplified in 2023 when the Australian Human Rights Commission reported that the highest number of deaths in police and prison custody since the Royal Commission had occurred. In that same year, a majority of Australians voted against Constitutional Reform to recognise First Nations Australians and an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in a National Referendum. The poor quality and the divisive political debate that surrounded the Referendum also showed how far we have not come.
Sometimes we walked in silence, sometimes we talked, sometimes one of us quietly wept during that midnight walk in Broome. There was always sweet sorrow for lives and deaths differently known, but not differently felt. An uneven balance has been sustained for so many Indigenous women, men, and children whose sorrow is often unaccompanied by the possibility and the sanctity of sweetness before, during, and after custodial death.
Professor Sandy Toussaint is Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, at the University of Western Australia.
Main image: (Getty Images)