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So Far, So Good

A memoir of connection, loss, laughter and the Torres Strait
Pantera Presserschienen am01.07.2022
A powerful memoir from actor, writer, producer and proud Torres Strait Islander Aaron Fa'Aoso Aaron Fa'Aoso has earned a living as a professional footballer, a Kings Cross bouncer, a remote community health worker, an acclaimed actor and-most recently-as the owner and manager of his own media production company. Aaron's story is all about what it means to be a successful Indigenous man in the twenty-first century. With generosity, humour and emotional insight he examines how the death of his father, when Aaron was only six, led to his being raised by his loving but fiery mother and his even fiercer grandmother. How belief in himself as a warrior, and as a descendent of a long line of warriors, made him - literally and metaphorically, for better and for worse - into a fighter. However, Aaron's career, and his role as an emerging leader, were both hard-won in the face of many setbacks and heartaches. In 2008, a month after Aaron married for the second time and just as his acting career was flourishing, his new wife took her own life. In the dark times that followed Aaron eventually found strength and meaning in his family, and in his beloved Torres Strait community. Aaron talks frankly about mental health, racism, the personal impact of alcohol, as well as the consolations of belonging to Country, and the challenges facing remote communities. So Far, So Good is a rich and vivid reflection on life and a celebration of Torres Strait culture.

Aaron Fa'Aoso is an actor, film producer and director. He is known for his roles in The Straits, East West 101, RAN: Remote Area Nurse, Black Comedy, and as the presenter of Strait to the Plate. He is the executive director of his own film and television production company, Lone Star, which created Blue Water Empire, a dramatised-documentary series and history of the Torres Strait Islands. He is also a board member of Media RING - an industry group whose purpose is to develop, provide and enhance career opportunities for First Nations Australians in the media.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextA powerful memoir from actor, writer, producer and proud Torres Strait Islander Aaron Fa'Aoso Aaron Fa'Aoso has earned a living as a professional footballer, a Kings Cross bouncer, a remote community health worker, an acclaimed actor and-most recently-as the owner and manager of his own media production company. Aaron's story is all about what it means to be a successful Indigenous man in the twenty-first century. With generosity, humour and emotional insight he examines how the death of his father, when Aaron was only six, led to his being raised by his loving but fiery mother and his even fiercer grandmother. How belief in himself as a warrior, and as a descendent of a long line of warriors, made him - literally and metaphorically, for better and for worse - into a fighter. However, Aaron's career, and his role as an emerging leader, were both hard-won in the face of many setbacks and heartaches. In 2008, a month after Aaron married for the second time and just as his acting career was flourishing, his new wife took her own life. In the dark times that followed Aaron eventually found strength and meaning in his family, and in his beloved Torres Strait community. Aaron talks frankly about mental health, racism, the personal impact of alcohol, as well as the consolations of belonging to Country, and the challenges facing remote communities. So Far, So Good is a rich and vivid reflection on life and a celebration of Torres Strait culture.

Aaron Fa'Aoso is an actor, film producer and director. He is known for his roles in The Straits, East West 101, RAN: Remote Area Nurse, Black Comedy, and as the presenter of Strait to the Plate. He is the executive director of his own film and television production company, Lone Star, which created Blue Water Empire, a dramatised-documentary series and history of the Torres Strait Islands. He is also a board member of Media RING - an industry group whose purpose is to develop, provide and enhance career opportunities for First Nations Australians in the media.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780648987444
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Erscheinungsjahr2022
Erscheinungsdatum01.07.2022
Seiten368 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1182
Artikel-Nr.11934226
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




1
Adhi kuikaimaw

Let s begin the story


He was taller than me, a couple of years older too. Kids around us had started chanting: fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. School had just finished for the day and there were children and parents everywhere. I probably should have thought that through a little better.

He snarled, full of menace and bravado yet pale and sweating in the tropical Cairns heat, saying something like, C mon cunt, I ll have ya.

I ignored the noise and his bluster and instead sized him up, estimating the length of his reach, calculating where I would strike first. Usually somewhere unexpected. Not the head - everyone always goes straight for the head.

At 15, I already had years of martial arts experience behind me, regimens of barefoot running and full-body sparring that these days would be considered more like child abuse than training. Add to that my fitness from footy, basketball, pushbikes and swimming - if it was daylight I was moving, or wishing I was. And, thanks to my Tongan dad, I was a big, solid kid.

I hit him first. He was ready for me, though not ready for how hard my fist was or how much it hurt. To his credit, he came back at me with everything he had but I didn t feel a thing. This kid had stolen a bike from a little boy, my cousin, and had failed to return it when asked nicely. So I wasn t asking nicely anymore. I was filled with rage and fought with a righteous fury.

Somewhere along the way the kid s friends joined in, and then my younger brother, and it quickly turned into a melee. Some brave parents weighed in, trying to break it up, but we were fighting like dogs and it was too dangerous to pull us apart.

The fight ended with the other kid on the ground, not moving much. My brother and I picked up our school bags and walked away like kings, high on adrenaline and what we considered justice. He wasn t going to steal from a blackfella again. No-one tried to stop us, even though we had basically just put someone in hospital. But we were both in our school uniforms and people knew who we were.

I probably should have thought that through a little better too.

The repercussions of the fight started that evening. I told Mum what had happened as soon as she came home from work. She was quite rightly furious, so that didn t go too well. Yet she wasn t so upset that she failed to see into the heart of the matter.

Did you get your cousin s bike back?

Yes. I got his bike back.

That wasn t nearly enough to get me off the hook, though. When she subsequently told some of my uncles about the fight, and my nan, that didn t go well either. They all wanted a piece of me.

And within a day or two I was called into the principal s office. That really didn t go well. I d not yet finished Grade 10 but he wanted me gone. Expelled. Piss off and don t come back. Any future I might have had was shrivelling up fast.

Looking back, it s surprising the police weren t involved. Maybe the other kid s family were worried about the stolen bike. Maybe someone within my extended family had put a word in with the right people. Or maybe - given that Bjelke-Petersen had not long been out of office and Cairns was still, well, Cairns - the cops simply couldn t be bothered.

My righteous fury had fallen away almost immediately, and in its place was a sense of sorrow. Like any 15-year-old in hot water, I felt sorry for myself, but I increasingly felt sorry for the other kid too. I d hurt him pretty bad. A week or so after the fight, without any prompting, I went around to his parents house and apologised.

But it was to Mum and Nan that I most needed to say sorry.

They d brought me up to be better than some schoolyard brawler, to know better. They wanted me to make something of myself. Every day, through a thousand practical actions, they taught me about right and wrong, but they were lessons I was destined to learn over and over again - usually the hard way.

Women of the Samu (Cassowary) and Koedal (Crocodile) clans, from the Torres Strait, Mum and Nan are proud descendants of generations of Melanesian warriors. Strong, and fierce with it, they are the toughest women I know. The most loving too.

My nan, Mary-Betty Harris, was born on Saibai, a large, low-lying Australian island only about four kilometres south of the Papua New Guinea mainland. In 1947, when Nan was a teenager, king tides flooded the island, submerging the main village under metres of water. For the people of Saibai, it was only the latest in a series of environmental challenges. The community had been suffering from the effects of erosion and the impact of salt on their crops and freshwater supplies for a long time.

After much discussion, many Saibai families decided to move permanently to the Australian mainland - to the tip of Cape York Peninsula, about 170 kilometres south. Within a year, the Queensland government gazetted 18,000 hectares as a reserve for the use of Torres Strait Islanders. By the early 1950s, a settlement was established, called Bamaga in honour of the Elder, Bamaga Ginau, who had led the migration discussions but who had not lived to see the results.

Basically, my nan and her family were Australia s first climate-change refugees.

They were among the community pioneers who worked in Bamaga to clear the land and to establish agricultural enterprises to feed their families, and who built a settlement from scrub, from nothing. There s something about taking that untravelled road that s instilled in me, something about being born from that legacy. Now we, their descendants, are responsible for the land, for the community. I m choosing my words carefully here - it s not our land , we are not the Traditional Owners, but it s very much our responsibility.

For about 20 years, Nan lived in Bamaga with her family, and then with Grandad. She had a daughter - her only child, Delilah Elizabeth, my mum. Nan was determined that her girl would receive a solid education. At what now seems like a ridiculously young age, Mum was sent to an Anglican boarding school for the first years of her education. Then in 1968, when Mum was 13, Nan and Grandad moved south again, this time to Cairns, so that Mum could go to school there.

Some of Nan s siblings moved too. In fact by then, as is still the case today, fewer than half of all Torres Strait Islanders actually lived in the Torres Straits, creating a cultural and community diaspora throughout Queensland. To a lesser extent throughout the rest of the country as well.

In the 1960s and early 70s, Cairns was a country town of about 30,000 people. It was a thousand kilometres away from Bamaga and a world away in terms of educational and work opportunities. Mum and Nan s story - and mine too, I guess - is in many ways a typical migrant tale of having to move from a cherished homeland to a place that offered - well, to a place that offered more. The loneliness, the difficulties of being black newcomers in a largely white community, that sense of not quite fitting in - it was all a loving sacrifice, leaving family and friends for the benefit of the children, and of their children to come.

Mum obviously learnt the migration lesson well. At the age of 17 she moved again, without any family members this time, to Canberra for a job in the public service, within the Department of Defence. The government agencies in Canberra offered employment opportunities to First Nations people that were simply not available anywhere else. Mum went down with four or five other girls from the business college in Cairns, and they shared accommodation, and stories about how homesick they were. Canberra was a bold move for a girl from the sticks, but she had plenty of courage, and she made it work.

At Christmas, Mum returned home to Cairns for a visit. She couldn t afford a plane ticket so she took the bus, an uncomfortable trip of over 60 hours: changeovers at dodgy terminals in Sydney and Brisbane, trying to sleep while sitting upright, the road quality deteriorating the further north she went. Worth it, though, to see family again for a week or so. Then back on the bus for the return.

Nan, meanwhile, was employed at the prawn factory in Cairns, where she was one of their fastest peelers, and a packer and sorter. She was so fast that she d win the novelty Peel n Eat competitions at the annual Cairns Fun in the Sun festival. Nan would do the peeling, Nan s friend s son would do the eating, and together they won a couple of years in a row. My Uncle George used to win the coconut husking. Shame that none of the family were good at the woodchop competitions or we could have taken home the trifecta.

Nan, always up for a chat, made a new friend at the factory. He was a young Tongan man named Lisiate Fa Aoso, although everyone called him Richard or Tiki. And while the apostrophe in his last name made it seem complicated, it was pronounced far-so: easier to say than to read.
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