All of the stories presented on this site remain expressly the property of those interviewed.

Submitted with permission by: Max Solomon and Bairnsdale Secondary College. Compiled by Tracey Fenton and Angela Kolar, Bairnsdale Secondary College, Victoria, Australia.

Introduction

Max Solomon is a Koori elder who does volunteer work at Bairnsdale Secondary College, Victoria, Australia. Tracey and I have done an interview with him which includes his life story.

Question:  Being Koori did you experience much racism?

Max: Yes quite a lot because a lot of white kids would call me a "Nigger" or "Blackfella" and because of them being racist I would get into a lot of fights.

Q: How have things changed for Kooris since you were a child?

M: I was real surprised because white kids would be talking and hanging around Koori kids at school and more white people are giving Kooris a chance by giving them jobs.

Q: How is it different growing up being a Koori from being a white?

M: A lot of people looked at me different because I was a Koori and I was embarrassed by some of the older Kooris getting drunk all the time but my mother would always tell me to keep myself clean and maybe white people would respect me.

Q: Are you proud to be a Koori? Why?

M: Yes I am. I was glad to be born black because Kooris are making something of themselves, like Cathy Freeman and Lionel Rose.

Q: When you were young did you get told about traditional stories from your elders?

M: No, because it was between the war and the depression and my uncles and aunties were always working.

We asked Uncle Max to give us his life story. Here it is.

MY LIFE STORY BY MAX SOLOMON

I was born in Hilstone in N.S.W in 1932. Hilstone was a small town on the banks of the Lachlan River. It was during the depression that I started to grow up. My father was born in Junee and my mother was born in Cabargo on the coast up from Bega. My father worked on the railways. He was very lucky to get work. Then he died of pleurisy and double pneumonia. There were 7 children in my family, 5 boys and 2 girls. I was the middle one, one girl and two boys older than me and one girl and two boys younger than me.

I first started school at Temora about 100 miles south east of Hilstone.

When dad died, mum was given a covered wagon, something like the cowboys had on T.V. She put a double mattress on the floor of it and what clothes that we had. Food was put in a special compartment at the back. Our camp oven with pots and pans was on a wire netting cradle that was strung across under the wagon bed. Some water containers were lashed on one side and feed containers for the two horses were on the other. It took us about ten to twelve weeks to travel from Temora to Orbost where dad's brothers and sisters families where living.

Us boys used to chase rabbits into hollow logs and catch then this way for food. The logs were quite small and a bit rotten, so it was easy to bust them apart. Then we gathered wild berries and fruit to eat. Sometimes a farmer would give us some potato and pumpkin. Some days we went hungry with only a piece of damper to keep us going until we caught a rabbit.

Word must have been passed on, for when we were about ten miles from Orbost, we came around a corner and there in front of us were a lot of Aboriginal people of all ages. Us kids didn't know what to do, because we had never seen these people before. But mum knew dad's family. Everybody was talking at once, all asking questions. We soon got to know all our new cousins, uncles and aunts. We all had a big feast that night and we will never forget it.

When we got to Orbost the men had already built a small hut for mum and my young sister. My older sister got a job at Orbost hospital as an assistant cook. My older brother got a job in the bush cutting sleepers.

I started school in Orbost in 1938. My 3 brothers and sisters had a hard time straight away. Kids picked on us and called us niggers and blackfellows. Us boys got into lots of fights over it. I tried to explain to the white kids that I was born in Australia not in America or Africa, where the Negroes come from. Sometimes, I would punch a kid up and then have to go to the headmaster and get six of the best with the kid that I was fighting, then go back to the play ground and get into another fight with another kid. Then I would have to go and get another six cuts. Some of the poorer kids would stick up for us. Then it used to be fights on the way home after school. My brothers and sisters and I would have to sit by ourselves, and if the teacher wanted to punish one of the white kids, they made him or her sit with us, and the white kids hated that. We didn't like that either because it made us feel uncomfortable. But there was not anything that we could do about it.

I went to high school. I was treated a bit better there, because I was very good at sport. I out ran and out classed a lot of kids, so I was sought after for that. When us kids were going to school, we used to get sixpence for lunch, threepence bought us a pie and a penny each for a cake. Sometimes we picked up a soft drink bottle. We got threepence for it so we gave mum the money or kept it for lunch next day.

Then the war started and mum could not afford to keep me at high school. So I left when I was 14 and went sleeper cutting with one of my uncles to help mum. I worked in the bush all week, living in an humpy or leanto. That is 5 or 6 sheets of bark propped against a tree with the back of it towards where the weather or rain came from. It was very hard work but good money. I stayed in the bush until I was 18 then started in sawmills. That was the same too.

When I was 22 I went to Queensland with one of my mates. We hitchhiked up to Gladstone where I got a job on a fishing boat. It opened up my eyes and sort of educated me of the ways of life. I travelled to most of the areas of the Great Barrier Reef, seeing great whales swimming towards us then at the last moment diving under the boat and coming up the other side. Massive turtles and reef fish and sharks of all kinds. I then left after a couple of years and went to Bundaberg and worked on the railways. I also played rugby league for Bundaberg with big Mal Meninger's father. I stayed there for two years where I met and married my wife. I then brought her back to Orbost and worked in the sawmills until 1972.

By then, I had three sons and two daughters. I made myself a good name as a hard worker and an honest man. I still have that same reputation today and my children have done the same. From 1972 I worked with the C.R.B., then Vic Roads. Now I was accepted there too and got the chance to drive a lot of machines: graders, front-end loaders, trucks, and made a lot of good friends, attending accidents, floods and road making.

In 1990 I left, or they retired me because I was getting too old; so after 19 years with Vic Roads I used the money from my retirement to buy a house in Lakes Entrance where I still live. I went out to Lake Tyers to fill in my spare time teaching the young kids and youths the art of making boomerangs, spears and nulla-nullas. A lot of the elders were never interested in that sort of thing, all they wanted to do was get drunk.

A lot of older people had died earlier and never passed on their skills of tracking, and stories of their lives. Because I worked on the roads with help of some white blokes with graders and bulldozers we upgraded it until we got Vic Roads to come out and seal it for us. Now they have a beautiful bitumen road to drive over.

I was then asked by the Aboriginal Co-op to start the Gotta-Mate Program at Bairnsdale Secondary College, which I did and now I never regretted it because it gives me great pleasure to help not only the Koori kids but the white kids too. Since I have had talks with them in classes and other outings we have got a better understanding with each other. The teachers have accepted me with great pleasure which made it a lot easier for me to work with the children.

Now I hope to work with the kids until I am too old to be able to come to school.

But it is something that I will never forget and always stay with me for the rest of my life.

P.S. Of my 5 children I have 16 Grandchildren, 10 Boys and 6 Girls. The children's ages are from 4-14.