Aaron McGrath and Colin Smith in Black Cockatoo. Photo: Prudence Upton
This is a great story, well told by an all-Aboriginal cast, and one that should be much more familiar to us all.
The stories passed down to us through history are not always strictly accurate, and that goes for the one about the Australian team that took cricket to England in 1868. The romantic history version talks about the tour by the Aboriginal First XI that impressed the Victorians by winning 14 of their matches while losing 14 and drawing 19. It doesn’t mention that the tour had circus-like qualities, that the Indigenous cricketers were presented as curiosities in specious tribal costumes and required to perform mock battles and show their skills with boomerangs and spears; that the players didn’t get paid and (no surprise) there were no ticker-tape parades to welcome them home. As the English might say, it’s just not cricket!
Geoffrey Atherden’s new play Black Cockatoo aims to set the record straighter. It’s directed by Wesley Enoch (yes, he’s the Sydney Festival director as well), with input from cultural consultant, Uncle Richard Kennedy.
The Black Cockatoo of the title is Unaarrimin, better known these days as Johnny Mullagh, who was undoubtedly the star of that First XI. A Jardwadjali man, he acquired his surname because he was born on Mullagh Station, near Harrow in the southern Wimmera region of western Victoria. A superb all-rounder, Mullagh played all 47 matches (it was a gruelling tour), scored 1698 runs at 23.65 on often treacherous tracks, and captured 245 wickets at 10 apiece. He also kept wickets once in a while, affecting four stumpings in the process. Cricket scores baffle me – I really don’t know balls from bales – but thankfully you don’t need to understand the game to appreciate this play.
It’s set in three time periods: 1868-1869; the recent past (2018); and the present. The genial Luke Carroll is the Curator of the piece, introducing himself to his audience from what could be a museum’s storage room (set design, Richard Roberts), full of filing boxes, and giving us a little bit of history via artefacts – a watch, a prayer book, a boomerang – preserved from the tour. Next we cut to a group of five protestors who have broken into the Wimmera Discovery Centre. Their mission is to expose the sugarcoated version of the tour: they want the truth told. They’re a motley crew, personable and genuine, and in the case of Kimberley (Dubs Yunupingu) very funny. We also get to hear them speak in their language.
Johnny Mullagh, the star of the tour, is also the star of Black Cockatoo. Aaron McGrath plays him with integrity and a subdued vulnerability, giving us some idea of just how confronting it must have been for him – and the other members of the First XI – to be on tour in Victorian England and subject to the strangeness, rudeness and racism of those times. His captain, Englishman Charles Lawrence, a dubious and exploitative character, is played by Colin Smith, and another team mate is Joseph Althouse. Both double as activists.
Chenoa Deemal does a fine job as Lady Bardwell, a composite character representing some of the more benign forces at work in Victorian Britain, constrained as it was. In this story, she is yet another confusing factor for the Black Cockatoo, who is far away from his life on a rural station. “Always be polite, not too bright” becomes his resigned mantra. Lady Bardwell recognizes the exploitation of Johnny and the team but, in the end, cannot do more than than. Let’s not forget she was a mere woman in a rigid patriarchal society.
What happened when the team came back to Australia? No adulation that’s for sure, and no more team cricket. It was 1869, and family and friends had been moved out to missions and reserves.
What happened to Johnny Mullagh? I did some post-play research. He continued playing cricket but he never received the recognition he deserved (and this in Australia, where as Roy and HG reminded us, ‘too much sport is never enough’!). Johnny ‘Unaarrimin’ Mullagh died in 1891 and was laid to rest in Harrow Cemetery. The headstone over his grave was erected using funds from a public appeal. The Hamilton Spectator described him, in his obituary, as ‘the [W.G.] Grace of Aboriginal cricketers’.
Maybe Black Cockatoo will finally get Johnny and the team some headlines, and perhaps one day also tour schools, because it’s a story that needs wide re-telling.
Black Cockatoo plays at the Ensemble Theatre until 8 February, then at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, from 18-22 Feb. It’s 90 minutes without interval. Tickets from $38 to $79, plus transition fee.
