By NEILL RETALLICK
Two Australians. Born thousands of miles apart into very different circumstances, the only tenuous connection being their humble beginnings and strong desire to contribute to their communities.
Many people have fought to improve rights for Indigenous Australians, but few have done more than Dr H C “Nugget” Coombs and Charles Perkins (pictured).
But their progress over the decades is in sharp contrast with the events on the streets of Alice Springs, judging from almost daily police reports.
Herbert Cole Coombs was born in 1906 in Kalamunda, a small country town out from Perth. He was one of six children of a country railway stationmaster.
He attended public schools, winning a high school scholarship to Perth Modern School in Subiaco. After graduating he enrolled into Teachers College, before being accepted into the University of Western Australia, then the only free university in Australia, studying a Bachelor of Arts whilst working as a teacher.
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Around 1:25am, police received reports of an unlawful entry at a residence on De Havilland Drive, Araluen. Two sets of keys were stolen from the location and used to steal a Toyota Prado and a Toyota C-HR.
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Graduating with Honours, Coombs won a scholarship allowing him to travel overseas and study at the London School of Economics in 1932 where he became a supporter of Keynesian economics.
Returning to Australia in 1934, Coombs joined the Commonwealth Bank as an economist. In 1939 he moved to the Treasury in Canberra as a Senior Economist and acquired the nickname of “Nugget”. The Great Depression had shown him that there were limits on the protected Australian economy. Charles Perkins was three years old.
Charles Perkins was born on a wooden table in 1936 at the Old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs, which was known as The Bungalow at the time. There he, his brother Ernie and his mother Hetti, of the Arrernte people, came to know and trust Father Percy Smith, an Anglican priest who established and ran a mission there.
Father Smith wanted to give Indigenous children from the Centre the chance at an education in the big city. He arranged, with the support of the Church and with the permission and financial support of their mothers to bring six children to Adelaide in 1945. Perkins was part of this group and took his opportunity to prove what Aboriginal people could do, if given the chance.
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A short time later, police sighted the stolen Prado driving dangerously through Amoonguna Community and initiated a pursuit.
During the pursuit, the Prado rammed the police unit on two occasions and the pursuit was terminated for safety reasons.
The officers inside the vehicle were not injured.
Later, a second police vehicle was stationary when the Prado drove at them head-on, ramming the front of the vehicle and then again at the rear. Members subsequently withdrew from the area.
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Perkins attended public primary and high schools. He joined British Tube Mills as an apprentice fitter and turner. Moving to Sydney, Perkins realised he needed an education to be taken seriously when advocating for Aboriginal people.
He attended Metropolitan Business College before enrolling at the University of Sydney. He supported himself by working part-time as a cleaner. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1966, the first Indigenous man to obtain a tertiary degree. It was national news.
Both of these men displayed enormous discipline and endeavour to be where they were in 1967. They had no idea the referendum held in that year would see their worlds collide.
Coombs retired as Governor of the Reserve Bank in 1968. Consequent to the referendum, he was appointed by the Holt Government to the new role of Chairman of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs in 1967.
Coombs never joined a political party, preferring to use his public service roles to influence those in power of whatever stripe. This appointment placed him at the cutting edge of how the Aboriginal community would be integrated into the broader Australian society.
Perkins efforts to influence Australian society took a very different path. In 1965, he was a key protagonist in the Freedom Rides, a bus tour across regional New South Wales exposing the poor treatment of Aboriginal people in small country towns, notably Walgett and Moree, where Aboriginal children were not allowed to swim in the public town swimming pool.
It was a moment of national shame inspired by the American Freedom Rides around the same time led by Dr Martin Luther King Jnr. The protests held by Perkins and his fellow riders received media attention. Their actions, and the responses by members of the local communities, put a spotlight on the disadvantages in health, education and living standards experienced by Indigenous Australians, underpinned by cold systemic oppression.
The Riders were variously pelted with eggs and tomatoes and their bus was rammed and forced off the road.
Perkins was a passionate advocate for Indigenous rights and actively involved in the lead-up to the 1967 referendum, working with the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs to promote a “Yes” vote.
Finally, Perkins was being taken seriously. He was consulted by Prime Minister, Harold Holt, on what the Government’s response to the referendum should be. Holt set up the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, under Coombs’ leadership, as the Commonwealth’s chief advisory body on Aboriginal Affairs.
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Both officers inside the vehicle sustained non-life-threatening injuries. While the vehicle was significantly damaged, the officers did not require medical treatment.
Strike Force Viper attended and initiated a third pursuit with the Prado, with the offenders abandoning the vehicle and attempting to flee the scene on foot.
The driver of the vehicle, aged 13, and the three passengers, aged 13, 11 and 11, were arrested without further incident with the assistance of the Dog Operations Unit.
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Also established was an Office of Aboriginal Affairs to which Perkins was appointed as senior research officer in 1969. This meant moving to Canberra, which seemed the right thing to do as his kidney disease had brought his Sydney soccer career to an end. The boot was now on the other foot as Perkins was now part of the government rather than protesting against it.
Public service protocols did not constrain his activism. In 1974 he was suspended for calling the Liberal-Country Coalition government in Western Australia “the biggest racist political parties this country has ever seen.” It was his decision to take a week of leave to sit with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that was the final straw. He was given leave for a year in 1975.
The referendum of 1967 gave the Commonwealth Parliament power to legislate specifically for Aboriginal people. However, Coombs was disappointed that the Gorton and McMahon governments took up few of the Council’s recommendations.
He became a close advisor to Gough Whitlam in the years before Whitlam became Prime Minister in 1972, and he largely wrote Labor’s policy on Aboriginal affairs, particularly the commitment to Aboriginal land rights.
Coombs was present when Whitlam poured a handful of red earth into Gurindji leader Vincent Lingiari’s right palm as a sign that the land officially returned to Aboriginal people at Wattie Creek in 1975.
In December 1972 Coombs received a delegation from the Aboriginal Housing Committee, based in Redfern, Sydney, applying for a grant to improve housing for Aboriginal people in the area. Their application was successful, enabling the committee to commence purchasing houses which led to the creation of the Aboriginal-run housing project, The Block. In 1972, Coombs was The Australian newspaper’s inaugural Australian of the Year.
From 1972 to 1975, Coombs served as a consultant to Whitlam. However, he found the experience of the first Labor government since 1949 disappointing.
He disapproved of the events that led up to the Loans Affair of 1975 and the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which led to the dismissal of Whitlam’s government. Although he regarded the dismissal as scandalous, his estrangement from Whitlam meant that he took little subsequent part in politics.
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CCTV operators later observed a 14-year-old male exit the second stolen vehicle in the Alice Springs CBD. He was subsequently arrested and found to be in possession of an edged weapon.
The second stolen vehicle was located abandoned in East Side a short time later. Investigations are ongoing.
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Whilst on leave in 1975, Perkins received a Literature Board grant to write his autobiography entitled, A Bastard Like Me. He was also appointed general secretary of the National Aborigines Consultative Committee.
He returned to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1976. In 1978 he was appointed as a first assistant secretary of the Department, and then in 1979 Deputy Secretary before resigning in 1980 in order to take up chairmanship of the new Aboriginal Development Commission.
Back in 1974 Whitlam announced the Royal Commission on government administration, chaired by Coombs, tasked with examining the purpose, functions, organisation and management of Australian Government bodies and the structure of the Australian Public Service. The commission reported in 1976, however the Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser largely ignored the recommendations.
A frustrated Coombs resigned all his posts in 1976 and became a visiting fellow at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University (ANU).
After serving as the chair of the Australian Conservation Foundation for two years, Coombs retired from public life in 1979. Aboriginal affairs continued to drive his thinking and, in 1979, he launched the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, calling for a formal treaty between Australia and the Aboriginal people. The idea gained much public support, but neither the Fraser government nor Bob Hawke’s Labor government took it up.
In his final public act as Prime Minister in December 1991, just before he was toppled by Paul Keating, Hawke unveiled the Barunga Statement.
Reflecting on this day in a 1993 interview Perkins was dismayed at the Prime Minister “crying like a baby” because of his failure in Aboriginal Affairs despite having all the levers of power available to him. This is one reason why Paul Keating made Aboriginal affairs a priority for his government, setting out bold policy ambitions in his landmark Redfern speech, setting up the Bringing them Home national inquiry and personally working on the Mabo legislation.
Bob Hawke’s Labor government appointed Perkins as Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1984, holding the position until 1988. He was the first Indigenous person to head an Australian Government department, but sadly Father Percy Smith had passed away in 1982 and didn’t live to see Perkins achieve this milestone, realising his dream in the desert from 50 years earlier.
Charles Perkins and Eileen Perkins meet Malcolm Fraser and his wife Tammy in 1981.
Typical public service restraint eluded Perkins and he remained a vocal critic of government policies on Indigenous affairs. Hawke once commented that he “sometimes found it difficult to observe the constraints usually imposed on permanent heads of departments because he had a burning passion for advancing the interests of his people”. Few public service leaders have been granted such latitude.
Perkins served as chair of the Arrernte Council of Central Australia from 1991 until 2000. In 1993 he joined the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), and in 1994 was elected deputy chair to Lowitja O’Donoghue, serving until he resigned in 1995 to become a consultant to the Australian Sports Commission.
He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1987 for services to Aboriginal welfare. Perkins was named by the National Trust of Australia as one of Australia’s Living National Treasures.
Coombs public service career set him on a path to become the first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, while Perkins was a soccer talent as a young man and grew into an activist and a vigorous freedom fighter breaking many glass ceilings along the way.
Coombs leveraged his elite public service career, and his position as having the ear of many Prime Ministers to advocate for Aboriginal people, and also the arts. Perkins was an outsider who carried the responsibility of leading the Aboriginal cause, at a time when this load was shared by very few.
Coombs was a powerful advocate for Indigenous Australians. He demonstrated a remarkable ability to establish deep and trusting relationships with Indigenous communities, to listen to and respect their priorities, and to mediate between those communities and institutions of government.
This gave him a position of influence in policymaking on Indigenous affairs. By his daily actions he demonstrated that Aboriginal people needed to be part of government decision making, decades before anyone knew what a Reconciliation Actions Plan was. Dancing before the RAP.
Coombs became a trusted associate of a number of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, particularly Yirrkala. In 1996 during one of his Territory visits Coombs suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died on 29 October 1997.
Coombs had two funeral services, one at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney and the other at Yirrkala. At the Yirrkala ceremony, Coombs was accorded full Aboriginal funeral rites. He was the only non-Aboriginal person to have been honoured in this way by that community.
The Yolngu funeral rite was conducted by Galarrwuy Yunupingu. Half of Coombs’ ashes are buried at Yirrkala, the other half at ANU University House in Canberra.
2025 marks 50 years since the return of land at Wattie Creek, 25 years since the passing of Charles Perkins and 60 years since the Freedom Rides. Perkins achieved so much in his 64 years, barely half of which he was counted as an Australian citizen with the right to vote.
Two contrasting leaders from different backgrounds. Both committed to improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Both travelled very different paths. Both making major contributions to our First Nations people.
PHOTO at top: Dr H C “Nugget Coombs accompanying Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at the Wattie Creek hand back ceremony in August 1975.
Neil Retallick is now retired, but he was formerly CEO of the Barssa Co-Op (Community owned supermarket in the heart of the Barossa Valley selling many local products) and was chair of Foundation Barossa until 2024. He was inspired to learn more about this Centralian history after reading the script for the Mark Webber feature film Finding Miss Almond based on the life of Isabel Smith OAM.
Coombs and others who influenced official policy, like Paul Hasluck and W. H. Stanner, were committed to an assimilation policy, which Perkins and others opposed.
I read in Perkins’s book that he quickly found himself in conflict with both the Council for Aboriginal Affairs and the bureaucracy, particularly regarding the exclusion of Aboriginal people from decision-making.
Coombs also led the Aboriginal Treaty Committee and was behind Kakadu.
I think that the affirmative YES vote in the 1967 referendum caught Harold Holt’s Liberal-Country Party Government by surprise. Not many referendums get up.
The government was required to do something, but it was not sure what to do. The media speculated as to whether the government had an Aboriginal policy at all.
Holt cast about for advice. Holt conferred with Mr Perkins in July 1967 when in New York. In August he conferred with Dr Coombs.
In September he established the Council of Aboriginal Affairs, as the Commonwealth’s chief advisory body.
@ Harold Elliot: The assimilation policy was in full swing when the neighbourhood bounded by the old Alice Springs Gaol to the north, Alice Springs Hospital and brand new Traeger Park Primary School to the east, Traeger Park Oval to the south, and a short stretch of Telegraph Terrace on the rail corridor to the west, was created in the early 1960s.
The roads included Skinner and Willshire streets, where each house alternated with indigenous (mixed race) and white families.
Our family was one of those to move into a brand-new home on Telegraph Terrace in 1964, where we lived until moving to AZRI in 1967. I’m too young to recall our neighbours but occasionally I run into someone who remembers me as a toddler!
Emily Liddle and her family lived nearby in Willshire Street, I think; and her nephew, Charles Perkins, was an early supporter of those calling for the name of Willshire Street to be changed (there’s certainly an irony in the choice of that name!).
The policy of assimilation was adapted uniquely in Alice Springs during the 1970s and 80s when American families were integrated with alternating Australian neighbours in the new suburbs of Gillen and Larapinta – an aspect of recent local history that, to my knowledge, no-one has ever touched upon.
UPDATE 2/4/25 8.50am: From Alex Nelson: This should have been Gillen and Bradshaw, not Gillen and Larapinta.
I think that in 1969 Dr Coombs offered Mr Perkins a position as senior research officer in the Office of Aboriginal Affairs.
By this time his kidney problems were brining his Sydney soccer career to an end, so he was ready to move to Canberra.
This marked his transition from activist protesting from outside, to a new model of Aboriginal advancement, to change Australian government attitudes by working from within government, to reform entrenched systemic oppression of Aboriginal people.
Coombs is mainly known as the first RBA Governor. His work as chair of the Council on Aboriginal Affairs, his role in the ceremony handing back Gurindji lands at Wattie Creek, his chairmanship of the Australia Council for the Arts, his advisory role to several land councils and his role in the creation of Kakadu National Park are just as significant as his RBA role – and post WW2 reconstruction, which helped to set the foundation of the modern Australian systems and structures of government. This was nation building!
Great article Neil. Thank You.
Whilst the majority of Coombs’s legacy in Indigenous affairs relates to the period after his Governorship of the Reserve Bank, his commitment to Indigenous communities over this extended period of his life is part of RBA history – as Coombs was behind the use of David Malangi’s artwork on the $1 banknote.
I wonder what he would think of the latest $5 banknote?
@ Alex Nelson: Where can I find out more information about the alternating American / Australian housing policy in Gillen and Larapinta?
This article presents a striking contrast between two figures who shaped Indigenous affairs in Australia – Dr H C “Nugget” Coombs and Charles Perkins. Their different approaches – one from within government, the other through activism – —highlight the persistent challenges in Indigenous rights despite decades of advocacy.
Yet, the juxtaposition of their achievements with the ongoing struggles in Alice Springs is jarring. It raises a critical question: how much progress has truly been made? Have systemic issues simply evolved rather than been resolved?
Fifty years since Wattie Creek, we still see cycles of disenfranchisement. While Coombs and Perkins broke barriers, their legacy reminds us that symbolic victories alone are not enough. Real change demands sustained action beyond government committees and historical milestones. What do we take from their work, and how do we apply it today?
Coombs’s political and economic views were formed by the Great Depression, which hit Australia in 1929 and caused a complete economic collapse at a time when the protected and closed Australian economy was totally dependent on commodity exports for prosperity.
As a student in Perth, he was a socialist, but while studying at the London School of Economics (LSE – Jim Hacker’s LSE) he converted to the economic views of John Maynard Keynes. He spent the rest of his career pursuing Keynesian solutions to Australia’s economic problems.
I wasn’t aware of Coombs’s role in Wattie Creek nor the establishment of Kakadu – many remember him as the first RBA Governor, but his advocacy for Indigenous people and the arts is just as significant, if not more.
@ Peter Ellis. The latest $5 note is all you will get each week from Albanese and Chalmers if Labor wins the election.
@ Medium. This comment strikes at the heart of Indigenous issues. Systemic oppression of Aboriginal people remains. Often via government silence, ignoring people with legitimate needs and hidden by bureaucracy and annual symbolic routines of NAIDOC, Reconciliation Week, Sorry Day and all the while Closing the Gap targets stay largely the same.
@ Medium. Your question about what can we apply today, right now to help Australians in need, from the learnings of these historic figures. It comes down to stable home lives for children, good education and nutrition, family support and intertwined with culture or whatever values of belief system is important to the parents along with positive social and community activities – sport, the arts, music, etc.
@ Susan Bourke: Suggest searching records of the Commonwealth Dept of the Interior or its predecessor Dept of Territories (Americans have been resident in Alice Springs since 1955).
@ Judith Roberts: Charlie was hated by the bureaucracy and loved by remote Aboriginal groups.
He gave money for anything that was asked of him by Aboriginal people.
I was living in a remote community when he arrived to great fanfare from the locals.
The mob drove him around the outstations to show him what they wanted funding for.
He delivered the money as he promised he would. He always did.
Later he was asked why he handed out money as he did and he replied that no one else would ever accept Aboriginal decision making so when he got the chance he seized it.
Gillen was one area chosen for the integration of different styles of houses: Government workers / American workers / houses for housing commission residents / private built houses.
Plew Street was one of the street and Wenten Rubuntja, his family, myself and my family came to live there in the same week and became very good friends and our children grew up together.
Wenten Rubuntja was a great Arrernte man. Loved his vivid watercolours, typical of the Hermannsburg School of art, while his later work includes some dot painting.
@ Ralph Folds: How is that any different from the National Party running around the regions and handing out money to farmers and pastoralists? This has gone on since first settlement.
Yes Warren, Wenten was a great man who taught his children and mine to learn to live “both ways” believing that the Aboriginal and the non-Aboriginal communities have “to interpret each other”.
Unlike polititians who indulge in cheque book campaigning purely for electoral purposes, Charlie applied his influence to direct funds to where they were needed.
I remember him coming to Yuendumu and rescuing our store after it had been ripped off by whitefella managers.
As Ralph pointed out: “He delivered the money as he promised he would. He always did.”
And Bruce, yes you are right: “This has gone on since first settlement.” But I like to think there is a difference.
As for Nugget and Charlie coming at it from different angles, they were both on the same team.
They are both missed.
Nugget was truly committed to Australia, the country and making it a modern and grown up member of the international community.
He was a national builder. This is a great tribute to what he did to help Aboriginal people.
@ Gordon Shepherd: The 1967 referendum on Aboriginals was included alongside another proposal to break the nexus between the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The idea was that including a proposition to which most would vote “YES” would make it easier to get a “YES” vote on the other proposal.
The scheme did not work, the nexus proposal failed dismally.
In a 1947 newspaper article Percy Smith was hailed a “fairy godfather” for these children. He was quoted as hoping they would get educated and return to their people as lawyers, doctors and other professions. Perkins and others did.
In that era society thought of young Aboriginal people as cheap, or unpaid, labour on farms and pastoral properties. The white land owners probably laughed at Smith, while some of them may have come into his Church in Bath Street.