Bill Simon, Des Montgomerie, Jo Tuscano: Back on the Block: Bill Simon's Story. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009, ISBN 978 0 85575 677 2
Bill Simon is a pastor working in the heart of Redfern. Back on the Block is the story of his life, simply told.
It begins with a happy childhood on an uncongenial mission, and some years spent with his family evading the attention of the Aborigines Welfare Board.
The heart of the book, which for him explains all else, began when he was seized with his brothers and consigned to Kinchela Boys Home. He was then ten years old, and spent the next seven years in the home subject to the daily regime of assault and contempt that Kinchela provided for its clients.
He then moved to Sydney, where he had to deal with his anger. He learned to work, drink, gamble, take drugs and beat those he cared for. He lost partners and children. At his lowest, he had a strong religious experience that brought him into a church. After many ups and downs he found his life's work in the Block, the Indigenous area of Redfern. There he is at home with the territory both of the suburb and of the human heart.
At one level this is an inspiring story of a good man rising from inner depths. At another level it is an appalling and saddening story of how every instance of Government intervention diminished Indigenous men. And this is a story of men, who have had their manhood systematically stripped from them.
Reading this in a week when the horrors of Irish orphanages were exposed, when the horrors of asylum seeker detention in Australia are still fresh, one can only ask helplessly how people entrusted with the duty of care can so unerringly detect the points from which they can drain a man's humanity.
Simon's story began on a mission. He recalls the sadness of Aboriginal men who were forbidden to leave the mission or to provide for their families. If they caught fish or kangaroos, their rations of flour were deducted from them. Their male role was taken from them.
The agents of the Aboriginal Welfare Board were all male. The only woman Simon mentions is the frightened wife of the punitive and repressive man who took the children away.
In ten years at Kinchela he mentions not even a fleeting moment of kindness from a member