Queers of the Desert

Down & Out Along the Track (1979)


The following story appeared on page 15 of Campaign issue 57, printed in 1980. It describes the trials and tribulations of a young, newly-graduated gay male teacher who made the clearly unfortunate career choice of taking up his initial placement in Tennant Creek.

As much about the foibles of life in the NT public service in the late 70's as it is about being gay in the Territory of the time, it  provides a fascinating insight into the attitudes of queer city folk to the idea of trying to function in remote Australia. There is also a reference to the formation of an Alice Springs Gay Society at the time, which has not been reviously recorded, as well as some commentary on an early battle between good Christian women and those of suspect sexuality, centred around staffing the women's refuge.
GAY GUIDE TO THE BIRDSVILLE TRACK

RIGHT smack in the middle of our Northern Territory, between the Tanami and Simpson Deserts lies Tennant Creek, a sun-bleached community, of some two and a half thousand people. Gay population currently stands at minus one, although a local personality who walks around in miner's boots and a sarong, and has knowledge of Oxford Street, is still in residence. Campaign recently had the pleasure of listening to Laurie Vella, a gay man who gave up the pleasures of the Sydney "gay ghetto”, to take up a teaching position in Tennant Creek: In so doing, Laurie attained a certain notoriety. Here is his story, of how the gay population in Tennant Creek got to be minus one.

Laurie graduated from Sydney Teachers', College in 1978 with a Diploma of Education. He went for an interview with the Commonwealth Teaching Service, was accepted, and had his name placed on their list of "available teachers", On May, 9 1979, he received a telegram asking him to ring Darwin regarding a teaching position. He did so and within a week was in Tennant Cleek, expected to throw himself determinedly into the Area School's second term. It was in the speed of this transplantation from city to outback that problems arose. And it wasn't just a question of culture shock or Fokker Friendship-lag - there were practical difficulties. Main difficulty was accommodation.

Laurie's accommodation problems in the Northern Territory were couched in the bureaucratic confusion created by the phasing out of the Commonwealth Teaching Service in the North and its replacement by the NT Department of Education. Laurie went North thinking he was to be housed in a government run hostel. While still in Sydney he did, in fact, spend the best part of an hour on the phone, asking an official type in Darwin whether he should take linen and other essentials to this hostel. This official advised him that this would not be necessary - everything was provided. Laurie was rather surprised, then, when arriving in Tennant Creek, to be told that the hostel had been demolished five years ago. (News travels slowly in the Public Service, folks!)

Subsequent correspondence with the Department has seen the argument shuffle away from "the disappearing hostel" question to one concerning the following dictum contained in a department handout: "Single officers will be placed in a hostel by preference but should these (sic) be unavailable, hotel/motel/guesthouse accommodation will be found. IT REMAINS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIND YOUR OWN ACCOMMODATION FROM THIS TIME, Though the Department will assist in finding temporary rented houses ... Single officers (sic) flats are available in Darwin, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Waiting time for these flats vary (sic) from between (sic) six months to five years depending on the locality."

In a state of post-hostel shock, an in accordance with the above dictum, Laurie was shown to a local motel. With his car tied up in transport strike in Adelaide, walking was the order of the day. (The two Tennant Cleek, taxis cater almost exclusively to the aboriginal population. While deciding to leave his linen at home Laurie had brought with him a few other "necessities" - like eight budgies, a coffee table and an auto-harp. Thus, walking was quite an effort.

Still, he made it to the motel, where he was made to feel a little unwelcome. You see, motels thrive in these areas on the tourist coach trade. Single visitors seeking permanent resident status tend to screw up plans for profitable block bookings. Laurie moved, to the only other motel in town where the welcome was friendlier, but where he was still discouraged from unpacking his bags. He then complained bitterly to everyone he saw. Fellow teachers told him to stop moaning. They, apparently had suffered far more when they had first arrived, and they had men, women and children in tow, not harlequin budgerigars! Fortunately, moaning triumphed and Laurie soon moved into a government flat.

birdsville

While this was all in progress, a certain disaster had struck. Our Sydney protagonist had met a former acquaintance who greeted him with the cry: "Well, you’re an old queer from way back!" News spread like wild-fire (as it will do in country towns) that a new poofter had arrived in the Territory. Laurie soon learned that any single man who came to town was suspected of being homosexual. Most of them pass right through – he had a two-year contract.

While Laurie could hardly be described as effeminate, he did have certain qualities, like domesticity and cleanliness, that labelled a man queer in the Tennant Creek popular imagination. Life for Laurie soon became a question of countering derision with good works, with full acceptance never really being a possibility.

So, he arranged for Sydney MCC to send a parcel of clothes to the Australian Inland Mission; his colour television set found its way into the local bowling club; he made it his duty to organise non-smoking, non-drinking social functions for his students; and he became president of the Tennant Creek Aviculture Society (concerned with the breeding of birds). This last, endeavour made him quite popular for a time, and he remembers people stopping him in the street asking if they could buy canaries for their children. The Society was the hit of the local Goldrush Festival, until a ranger accused Laurie of selling Mountain Devils; a variety of lizard protected in the Territory. Our harassed hero pointed, out that it was ideologically unsound for lizards to be associated wit a bird show. This did
Not prevent a police investigation. His fellow aviculturalists assured Laurie that ranger harassment was normal practice in the district – no one really got on well with the ranger. Oh well …

Back on the homosexual front things were deteriorating. Laurie made the mistake of giving a little girl a cuddle at the local version of a roller-disco. News quickly spread that not only was there a poofter loose in the town, but a child molester as well. (Actually, in Tennant Creek the two insults are synonymous.) According to Laurie, that innocent little cuddle ruined his reputation in the town completely. The incident was brought up at school meetings, Council, meetings, and even members of the Avicultural Society took flight. Existence became an unending, series of wolf whistles and other public insults His sexuality and the myths surrounding it were the basis for trouble in school. His students continually brought up his homosexuality in class and used this as a means of undermining what authority teachers in Tennant Creek actually have.

Could things get worse, you must be asking, for our ill-fated boy from the big smoke? Well, perhaps we should mention the flat burglary.

Returning home from a skating night, Laurie was confronted by a youth known as Fangs, a young man who often partied in Laurie's block of flats, Fangs apologised profusely for what he’d done. "Done?" asked Laurie. What he'd done was knock at Laurie's door, and when no one answered ... he had broken in. Nothing had been taken, he swore, and then offered to pay for the window. A subsequent, inventory revealed a cassette player, camera, calculator, etc, had mysteriously vanished.

The inevitability of police action saw Fangs and friends yelling obscenities at Laurie in the street, at 2 am. All the cries of "poofter" appeared on the police statement.

While Laurie’s theft accusations were conveniently shuffled off to law enforcers in Alice Springs, Fangs took a job working around town with the Department of Roads. He then took up the position of gardener at Laurie’s block of flats. Hmmm. Fearing, that Fangs' next Public Service promotion might include share accommodation in his own block of government flats Laurie decided that a move was imminent. No good living fear, he thought, it's got to be a house or nothing.

Nothing turned out to be a transfer to Alice Springs. Sadadeen High School Alice Springs, was not so much a new start as an instant replay. Even though Laurie had expected more tolerance, and even more anonymity, in a city the size of Alice Springs, it wasn’t long before his students were claiming their studies were suffering because their teacher was a poofter. In the face of all this Laurie determined to remain himself, He also determined not to become involved with the Alice Springs Gay Society, which was then in the process of formation. More trouble he didn't need.

The Gay Society however caused such a stir with its newspaper and radio membership drive, that Laurie, as a "well known poofter” was easily implicated and became an early victim of the backlash against this subversive organisation. The principal and vice-principal grilled him about the Society, with the principal being extremely patronising towards homosexuality while saying that if Laurie had come to Sadadeen to propagate homosexuality, or instigate a homosexual society, then there was no room for him. Assurances by Laurie that all he wanted to do was serve his remaining twelve months in the Territory and get out of the place went for naught. The vice principal asked if he had ever sanctioned bisexuality. Laurie replied that he had only been teaching science and had only strayed from that course to touch on a subject he described as "moral development". This, he maintained to his superior; was in line with what he had been taught himself at Teachers' College, and was based on a textbook on moral development by Laurie Brady. On reviewing the book, the school hierarchy thought it might be a bit modern for Alice Springs.

Shortly after this episode Laurie did become involved with the Alice Springs Gay Society, agreeing to handle the religious aspect of the group's activities. He spoke at meetings, focusing on the plight of young people who leave the country town for the excitement of urban centres and the dangers inherent in forming a gay ghetto - a touch of irony there, folks, given Laurie's experience with homophobic country communities.

Two further stories need to be related: The battle for the Alice Springs Women's Cent-
re, and the battle of Todd River.

The Women's Centre, run on a volunteer basis, was mainly concerned with helping women .in crisis - women, black and white, who had been abused neglected or bashed by their drunken husbands, et alia (sic). The place was a refuge. Scandal! It was rumoured that several of the women running the Centre were of "suspect sexuality". Horror! Certain Church people objected to this possibility and determined to purge the volunteers or anyone who didn't 'measure up heterosexually. Lesbian or not, the women in charge of the Centre objected to sexuality being used to measure competence. Anyway, the purge was mounted in the face of a chronic lack of Church-oriented women prepared to give up their precious time to run the Centre. The “battle" culminated in a sit-in staged by the original volunteers and the retreat of the opposition. To the best of our knowledge the status quo is still in control in the Women's Centre. Gay-wise, Laurie saw that one triumph as a source of hope, but perhaps if we take a look at our second story you'll see why even a stout-hearted victory could not keep Laurie in the Territory for his full two-year term.

Laurie had struck up a friendship with a neighbour, Joe, described as a cowboy - tall and lanky, about twenty-three, with his two front teeth knocked out. The two friends would swim at a local waterhole together and then drink some beer, while Laurie collected weeds for the school fish tank and wildlife specimens to be sent to assorted museums.

One Friday night, when Joe announced that he was going away to work on the stations as a fencer, a bar crawl/come celebration ensued. The crawl took the friends past the newly opened pinball parlour, out front of which sat a group of blacks and three of Laurie's most difficult students. One of these students, a young thing named Charisse, yelled out: "There's Mr Vella the poofter." At this, Laurie's cowboy friend got off his high-horse and threatened Charisse's vicious tongue with a knife. Soon Laurie and Joe found themselves being pursued by a dozen and a half aborigines. Pursuers and pursuees, met in the middle of the Todd River (it's all sand no water). The blacks formed a circle around the poofter and the cowboy. The cowboy broke through the cordon and fled, leaving Laurie to be mugged. With the fun over, the, aborigines assisted Laurie to the local hospital, but this did little to assuage his anger. He went AWOL shortly after this, and returned to Sydney, determined to find his sanity and the bulk of his furniture which he had been unable to off-load at Tennant Creek. It had been touring Northern Australia in a removalist's van ever since then.

With Laurie settling back into the luxuries and security of Sydney's ever-growing gay community you might be excused for thinking that his gay guide to the Birdsville Track had come to an end. Not so. Before he left for the Territory Laurie had joined the Army Reserve. He was accepted without question. He has now been informed by the appropriate authorities that he is psychologically unsuited to be a member of the Army Reserve. Just as, well; he may have been asked to defend our Northern frontiers … should he?
D. H. Wayne



John Hobson

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