THE REAL SAPPHIRES Macrae and He Changed His Name Cummeragunja Mission, in 1939

REVEILLE INTERVIEW REVEILLE INTERVIEW

suited to US Forces, whose large black in Melbourne, she’s chairman of an to the country. Now it’s more common contingent would be most receptive to their Aboriginal boarding school, but we all to have these things recognised. Like exciting blend of soul and jazz, which was keep in contact. Our eldest sister Naomi having the Welcome to Country. But we so much like the music of The Supremes, runs the Aboriginal Medical Service in were doing it back then, as ambassadors, The Ronettes, and The Crystals. Redfern and Beverly works there too, meeting black Americans at Pastor Doug And how right he was ... which is why we’re meeting here. Nicholls’ church. He had a church in Yet the real story is very different in so Reveille: When was the last time you sang Fitzroy in Melbourne. It was a gathering many ways. To find out how, I recently together? place for Aboriginal people. There we caught up with Laurel in her lunch break Laurel: We sing a lot together . . . would meet visitors to the church and make from the Aboriginal Medical Service in Lois: Yes, as family we do. But we don¹t them feel welcome. At that time we met Redfern, along with big sister Lois, on sing to entertain in public, because when Matawilda Dobbs, Winifred Atwell, Arthur holiday from her job as Director of an we split up after Vietnam I married a GI Ashe, Ray Charles . . . Aboriginal college in Melbourne to spend and we went to live in America. Laurel Reveille: So we’re talking about before the festive season with her sisters. married an American airman and lived you went to Vietnam. I started off by asking about the family in the United States and then in England. Lois: Yes. Meeting these people from that produced the girls who became The Beverly lived in New Zealand. We’ve all America, their music became our music, Sapphires and just who of the sisters had different lives. soul, jazz, blues . . . we became aware of actually went to Vietnam. Reveille: Where were you all born? all these young black men going to fight in Lois: Shepparton. Well, we say Vietnam. The scene in the movie of going Laurel, Beverly and Naomi rehearsing Reveille: Laurel, I understand the Cummeragunja, that’s our ancestral home, to sing for them in the hospital was very script was written by your son, on the border of NSW and Victoria. It was touching for us. Tony Briggs. So is the family an Aboriginal reserve. They used to give Reveille: Then you went for an audition name Briggs? concerts many, many years back on the where they were looking for people to Lois: To cut a long story short: mission just to be together as a community. entertain in Vietnam . . . our grandfather’s name was Then they had a walk-off from the Laurel: Beverly and I were working in THE REAL SAPPHIRES Macrae and he changed his name Cummeragunja Mission, in 1939 . . . Melbourne as telephonists in the PMG. when he was 14. Reveille: Long before you were born Lois was modelling – she was the first It was the pick of the movies produced was based on the real life experiences of Laurel: So my son decided to Lois: Yes; then most moved off the Aboriginal model in Australia; Naomi was in Australia last year, a hit not just here, his mother Laurel Robinson and her big use Macrae ... mission to the Victoria side, down on to nursing. We started singing at this club, just but even more so on the international sister Lois Peeler. He fictionalised the story Reveille: If your son wrote it I the river banks. But we always maintained trying out. scene, where the stars were feted at all the in certain ways to capture other aspects guess you would have approved the singing. The children would put on Reveille: So you’d actually been singing major film festivals. And now it’s taken of Indigenous life, but in the main the of the end result? How true to concerts for the family in the backyards. together for quite some time before out most of this year’s major awards at narrative was as told him by his mother. life was it? That’s how we began. Vietnam? the Australian Academy of Cinema and Now that the film has proved so popular Laurel: The movie had to be Reveille: And it seemed like there were Laurel: We did a couple of shows at Television Arts. The Sapphires tells the worldwide we’re well aware of the fictional changed quite a bit. three sisters and the younger one who Puckapunyal the army camp . . . Then 12 story of four Aboriginal girls who went version, but the real life story behind it Reveille: But you are two of wanted to join . . . and had a problem months later we were offered this chance to to Vietnam for three months in 1968 to is little known. We’re all familiar with four sisters? because she was too young? go to Vietnam. entertain the Allied troops and had the the exploits of Little Pattie, Sylvia Rae Lois: Yes, the Aboriginal way: Lois: It was her [pointing at Laurel]! Reveille: What year was that? experience of a lifetime. et al, who did such a wonderful job of we are the children of two Reveille: And in the end you had to push Lois: 1968 Reveille editor Graham Barry writes: I entertaining the boys at the height of the brothers who married two your way in . . . Reveille: Which was when the big build-up first saw The Sapphires as a stage play/ Vietnam War. Indeed Sylvia Rae wrote the sisters. So actually we are first Lois: She was the baby ... of American troops was happening. musical at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre: story for us in Reveille and those ladies are cousins. We two [Laurel and Laurel: I was almost 16! Lois: Yes. But Naomi and Beverly didn’t exciting, funny, full of great songs, it still active, enthusiastic participants in RSL Lois] are actual sisters ... and Reveille: So at that time the oldest was . . . want to go – they were protestors, Naomi managed to capture the feeling of four girls life. the other two [Naomi and Lois: Twenty-one . . . At that time, the ’60s, was very much against the war, so she entertaining the troops, literally on active But the real story of The Sapphires has Beverly] are actual sisters. being Aboriginal, we were involved in a lot refused to go. Then 12 months later we got service, and subject to all the dangers been neglected, for the simple reason that Lois and Laurel today Reveille: And you all still link of politics, because of the White Australia the offer. inherent in such a situation. the promoter of their tour thought that their up? policy. It was a social movement too. We Reveille: That was changed on stage and The play was written by Tony Briggs, and appeal, and their music, would be most Laurel: Oh yes! Lois lives used to work with black people who came in the movie, to show all four going. How

REVEILLE 28 REVEILLE 29 REVEILLE INTERVIEW REVEILLE INTERVIEW

Three sisters left for America, with Aboriginal and Reveille: There was a predominant Maori groups at Sir Dallas Brooks Hall in black element in the US forces in Melbourne. Vietnam, wasn’t there? Reveille: You were actually recruited to Lois: Well they were uneducated, entertain US troops. You didn’t entertain a lot of them, and they saw it was Australian troops at all? a chance to get away from a bad Laurel: Well, there were vastly more situation. It is shown in the movie US troops there than Australian troops, that a lot of questions were being but inevitably there would be a mix of asked about why they would be Australian troops in the audience. We fighting this war, when in their did go to the base at Vung Tau. We were own towns at home they were being invited for lunch there with the whole barred from this and barred from that. Naomi was the eldest, she was like troupe. It was the first tomato sandwiches I Martin Luther King was assassinated, they Gail in the movie. She’s CEO of was craving for like we’d have at home! It were being dragged through the streets, the Aboriginal Medical Service in was really nice of them to invite us. their churches being burned. Kids were’t Redfern. Still working full time but Reveille: You didn’t sing together after allowed to go to school; so they wondered: supposed to be cutting back. Born Vietnam? why are we here fighting this war? 1942 Laurel: By then Lois was married. We Reveille: Martin Luther King was Beverly was born 1944. Senior social never regarded it as part of a professional assassinated in 1968 – that was the year worker career. We’d do selected events but we you were in Vietnam. Laurel was born 1948. “I met my never looked at it as a long term profession. Laurel: Yes, my son Tony was born in July husband here in Sydney when he You’ve got to remember we were just 1967 – the writer. So I was away when he was based at the Richmond Air Force Above: Laurel and Lois on stage. Inset: The girls perform on an improvised stage: a still from the movie. coming out of a period of the White took his first steps. He was just walking Base, NSW where there was a small Australia policy. The opportunities weren’t when I came back. The movie shows my US Detachment. really there for black people, so we never mother saying you can’t go. My mother Lois was born 1944. Started modelling do something which sounded classy. helicopters, or the big cargo planes. And really gave it a lot of thought. Going to never actually said that. She said, yeah, all 1965-6. Went to America to live for Lois: We were very drawn to black you’d be travelling through jungles and Vietnam was an opportunity for us, and a right! a number of years with husband, and did Naomi and Beverly feel about being music soul, jazz and blues. And we were when you went through the villages,that chance to make some money. But in the Reveille: It’s hard to recall now but that Belgium. “I became an army wife. I’d portrayed as going to Vietnam? different. A lot of the singers who were was when you’d see the war. end we never made anything out of it. We was a time of great political turmoil. say the army looks after its own up to Laurel: They weren’t too happy, but they going to Vietnan were blonde, at a time Reveille: There’s a very scary scene in the were ripped off. We had the experience and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated too . . a certain point. As a medic in Vietnam, understood it was my son’s story. So he when there was a lot of surfer music. We movie when you’re travelling from one after that we just had the memories! . There’s an awful scene in the movie in a he was exposed to Agent Orange and got the ok from them and they always wanted to be different. We were catering base to another in an old Citroen and you’re Reveille: Did the Americans rip you off? rescue helicopter where a wounded white he actually ended up dying as a result make sure they tell people they didn’t go to for all kinds, not just the top 20 crowd. stopped by unidentified Vietnamese. What Lois: No. It was the promoter here. soldier says, “Take your dirty nigger hands of that. His cancer wasn’t accepted as Vietnam. Reveille: So how long were you there? actually happened? Reveille: Did the Australians not want off me.” Did that really happen? linked to Agent Orange at first, so I Reveille: And it was quite dangerous at Laurel: Three months. The climate took Laurel: We were actually in a van at the you? Laurel: The scene was told to us by Lois’s had to fight for that recognition. times? some getting used to but being young it time and we didn’t feel in any danger. Laurel: It wasn’t that at all, it was the late husband who was a medic and we “Films do tend to show the negative Lois: Oh yes, the movie was based on wasn’t too bad. We’d do one or two shows They took the band members’ cartons of agent here who thought we would appeal mentioned it to Tony a few years ago. side of black life, living in slums. But Laurel and me telling Tony our experiences a day for a week and then go back to cigarettes they had given to them on the more to the Americans. The Australians Reveille: Last question: the movie shows we never lived in slums. Our parents and him putting them into a script. And Saigon for a week’s break. base we had just left and they walked seemed to have it covered with Little Kay being removed by the authorities. had 14 children. Some of them passed yeah, it was scary! [laughs] Anyway we Reveille: Really! around the van, then let us continue! Pattie and the others. I guess he thought What actually happened? away as babies, but we always had had to help get the show together, which Lois: Yes, they billeted us with a Sometimes when you were in Saigon you he’d put in something from Australia for Laurel: Our mother’s three sisters were a roof over our heads, clean clothes was done in Sydney for two weeks and Vietnamese family. A lot of their life was would hear the bombing. the Americans and give them something taken away by authorities and placed in the etc. We were lucky with our parents then we went to Mount Isa for three going on as usual, especially in Saigon. Reveille: You really were just young girls different and it worked. Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for in that they always aspired to better weeks. And from there we went straight to They still had their markets, restaurants, at the time. Reveille: But you came back with nothing Aboriginal Girls and sent to white people’s things. They were always there for the Vietnam. hotels etc. But you never knew who was Laurel: Well actually I celebrated my 21st . . . homes to be maids etc. kids and for the community, which is Reveille: It was like you were modelling Vietcong, so in that way it was really birthday when we left Vietnam, in Thailand Lois: Nothing at all! Just the memories. Our mother didn’t meet up with her where we got our community feeling yourselves on the Supremes . . . strange. When we’d go out to entertain Lois: I went to America after that But it was the sort of thing that we thought sisters until she was 16 years old. This is from.” Laurel: Well, sort of . . . We were trying to the troops, we’d go in convoys, or in Laurel: We did a big concert after Lois we wanted to do. now called “The Stolen Generation”.

REVEILLE 30 REVEILLE 31 REVEILLE INTERVIEW REVEILLE INTERVIEW

REVEILLE 30 REVEILLE 31