Braidwood’s biennial TWO FIRES FESTIVAL not only promotes an improvement in relations between Australia’s ‘white’ invaders and its long term occupants but also brings to mind Judith Wright’s connection to the district. The Two Fires is the title of one of Judith’s poems written in the 1950s. Yes, her concern for the recognition of the Aboriginal population goes back a long way. We have to keep in mind that when Australia’s National Gallery opened in Canberra there were plenty of curators appointed to look after various visual art categories and one part- time curator for Aboriginal and various other non-European artefacts. Around the same time South Australia had a State Gallery but exhibited Aboriginal works in a nearby building as though they were anthropological evidence rather than art. Whatever ‘art’ might happen to be. 

Living in the same district as Judith it was my pleasure to drink the occasional cup of coffee with her, talk about social issues, the importance of nature in our lives and racial injustice. When I write ‘talk’ I mean ‘communicate’ since by then she was very deaf. And by ‘communicate’ I mean that I would write out my interruptions to her dialogue. That was a problem because my spelling is well below sub-standard. I always remember the ideas triggering those exchanges. Her writing is amazingly direct, steering clear of your Australian poet’s usual predilection for ‘look at me’ word-showiness. 

Here’s an extract from her METHO DRINKER: 

……………………… 'O take from me

the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time

that batters down my weakness; the knives of light

whose thrust I cannot turn; the cruelty

of human eyes that dare not touch nor pity.'

Under the worn leaves of the winter city

safe in the house of Nothing now he lies.

See, her mind, high-poetic or not, was connected to the world the rest of us inhabit. Me, I tend to drink too much, so I was amazed when sitting beside Judith at an arty Canberra dinner that I filled her glass as often as I did my own. 

Judith Wright was what our world needs a lot more of. We need people to get in there and fight against the prejudice, terrible estrangement, disproportionate jailing and every other negative that Aboriginal women, men, boys and girls face in their own country. 

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Robin Wallace-Crabbe. Artist and writer with more than 40 solo exhibitions in Australia and overseas as well inclusion in lots of group shows. Currently included in an Artists’ Books exhibition touring China. He has had 14 books, mostly novels, published in Australia, United Kingdom and the USA. He has also produced a lot of book reviews and pieces on the visual arts for various Australian newspapers (including art reviews and political cartoons for the Canberra Times in the 1960s) as well as Australian and overseas art and literary magazines.