In 1964 Yuwali was 17 when her first contact with white men was filmed. Her mob of 20 women and children were the last aboriginal people living traditionally, without any knowledge of modern Australia.
Patrol officers were sent to evacuate their desert home, ahead of rocket tests. Yuwali gives a riveting account of being chased hundreds of kilometers to escape the ‘devils’ in ‘rocks that move’ (trucks). Now 62, she tells the story behind this incredible footage.
The 29th of May 1964 was the date Australian and European Scientists predicted the Blue Streak rocket they were testing would break up upon reentry into the earth’s atmosphere and plummet into the Percival Lakes area, Yuwali’s home.
The authorities needed to make contact with anyone who might be living there and evacuate them. The days counting down to blast off drive the narrative of the film.
Day by day Yuwali, back at the Lakes, gives a riveting account as she and the 19 others in her group are chased hundreds of kilometres around the desert trying to escape the ‘devilmen’ in the ‘rocks that move’ (four wheel drives).
It’s extremely rare to hear such an articulate and perceptive first hand account of life before contact and the shock and fear of seeing cars, planes and whitefellas for the first time. Yuwali tells us of the discussions among her family and kin about how to respond to these terrifying new experiences.
One of the more contentious elements of the story is the decision to take the 20 Martu from their desert home into Jigalong Mission after contact.
The man who made that decision is Terry Long, a Native Welfare Officer for the Western Australian Government. He provides the other narrative spine to Contact by revealing the mindset of the whites involved in the patrol, the story behind the Blue Streak rocket programme and explaining why he made the decision to take the isolated group from their ancestral home.
Yuwali has lived through contact, missions, remote settlements, Native Title and desperate efforts to hold on to language and culture. In effect, she represents a microcosm of the Aboriginal experience since settlement in 1788.
In many ways, Contact is not only a story about the past. It holds up a mirror to contemporary society.
Some comments from directors Martin Butler and Bentley Dean:
When we first started filming with Yuwali we realised immediately that we had a truly unique storyteller with us. Her account is so detailed and so fresh that it dominates and drives the film. We can’t recall from anywhere in the world such an accessible and perceptive account of the ‘first contact’ experience.
While filming we attempted to capture Yuwali’s point of view to try and emphasise the subjective nature of her account. This is a film about her response to the planes, cars. rockets and whitemen that entered her life when she was a teenager.
We took her back to the extremely remote Percival Lakes where the contact occurred and got her to tell us the stories from the exact locations – where she first saw a car, where she was picked up, where she saw the rocket from etc.
All of the movie archive used is authentic to this story.
The footage in the desert was filmed by the lead patrol officer, Walter MacDougall and the vehicles, dingoes and people are all the direct participants in this story. All the footage of the rockets are the actual Blue Streak rockets that were fired.
Almost all of the photographs are also directly authentic although we have used one or two general pictures from other situations. This was a deliberate decision to try and preserve the integrity of the first hand accounts.
One of the extraordinary elements of filming was the rapport and comfort we managed to achieve with the Martu mob. We were lucky that we were introduced to them by people who had already established a great amount of trust with them.
This, and our very small team and willingness to roll with the flow of the Martu activities allowed an intimacy rarely captured. For over 2 weeks we interviewed Yuwali every day, in all sorts of locations.
We ranged widely over her experiences and thoughts at the time. Much of the time we involved Thelma in the storytelling and let the Martu set the scene, and bounce off each other. They clearly felt comfortable with us, to joke about each other, sex and those mysterious whitefellas.
They bring this story and their unique situation in 1964 to life so vibrantly and accessibly that they came to set the pace of the narrative – taking us back to that time and place without the use of dramatic recreations.
Contact is on at the Chauvel cinema, Paddington, from Thursday, September 10th, for two weeks. It is also on for a couple of weeks at the Cinema Nova in Melbourne from September 17th.
Want to read more? Grab a copy of the October #125 issue to read a deconstruction story about how the filmmakers made Contact.