<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/26/uncle-larry-walsh-stolen-generations-indigenous-children-stage-play-lazarus-malthouse-theatre-melbourne>
"Taungurung man Larry Walsh has more reasons than many to be angry. When he was
just two-and-a-half the state took him and his sisters from their home, a
riverside hut at Mooroopna, northern Victoria, where he was being cared for by
his nana while his mum was in hospital. From there he went to a series of
children’s homes. By the age of eight he was living with a foster family in
which the father was a violent drinker.
He was endlessly racially abused and bullied at school, and blamed for starting
fights when he physically retaliated or defended himself. Meanwhile, he was
subject to constant attention and harassment by police – alleging that, even as
an eight-year-old, he was a no-good criminal responsible for crimes he hadn’t
committed – which both tested and confused him. For he had never at that stage
committed any offence against the law. Or so he thought.
Unknown to Uncle Larry Walsh, now 71, he did have a criminal record. Although
it wasn’t until he was in his 60s that he discovered the Kafkaesque farce that
had in no small part shaped the course of his life: that the very act of state
removal of an Aboriginal child from their family bequeathed to the minor a
criminal record. Under “offence” his police record says “care/protection
application” and under sentence it states “committed to care of Child Welfare
Services”. The age of the offender is stated as “two years 6 months”.
Until 1989 it was standard practice for Victorian children removed from their
families purportedly for welfare reasons to be given a police record. Walsh was
among thousands of Aboriginal children in the state whose traumatic experiences
of removal from often functional families (there was no evidence the infant
Larry Walsh or his sisters were in danger) were criminalised by the state.
When Walsh found out in 2016 about the fallacious criminal history that had
shadowed his life, Victoria was the only Australian state or territory without
a scheme to expunge from the record irrelevant convictions. His white-hot anger
transformed into a positive energy for social change and law reform. Walsh
became a leading advocate for justice for the thousands of Aboriginal people
branded criminals simply for having been removed from their families,
manifesting in the passage of the Spent Convictions Act 2021.
Now his long life of tragedy, sadness and triumph is about to be celebrated in
a stage play, Lazarus, opening in Melbourne next week.
To describe “Uncle Larry” (as he is known in Victorian Indigenous communities)
as an activist, story-teller and scion of Victoria’s Indigenous communities
underestimates the complexity of his life in a way that the play, written and
directed by John Harding, aims to more fully illustrate."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
