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.