Percy Trezise OA 1923-2005
2005; Aboriginal Studies Press; Volume: 2005; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0729-4352
Autores Tópico(s)Australian Indigenous Culture and History
ResumoPercy Trezise was a remarkable Australian whose contributions in the fields of aviation, art, writing and Australian studies were recognised in his Order of Australia awarded in 1996. Percy was born a country boy on a farm in northeastern Victoria in 1923. After leaving Albury High School he tried various jobs and excelled in competitive cycling. His life changed when he joined the RAAF in World War II and trained as a pilot. After the war he took a job managing a drapery store in Melbourne, but his heart was in flying. With the determination and persistence that characterised Percy's approach to life, he lobbied for a job in the airline industry. By 1950 he was employed as a pilot by Australian National Airways (which later became Ansett Airlines). During a stint of flying Bristol freighters in the Kimberley for the Air Beef scheme, Percy was drawn to tropical Australia. In 1956 he was delighted to obtain a transfer to Cairns where he settled with his wife Beverley and their young family. As a pilot for Ansett and the Cairns Aerial Ambulance, Percy flew regularly to far-flung outposts of Cape York Peninsula and Tortes Strait. He relished the adventure of flying to remote areas, sometimes in challenging conditions, landing at isolated bush airstrips and meeting the people who lived on isolated settlements, cattle stations and Indigenous communities. A growing interest in Aboriginal culture inspired him to read anthropological studies by Spencer and Gillen, Elkin, McCarthy, Berndt, Mountford, Tindal, McConnel, Thomson, and others. Meanwhile, he was also emerging as an artist, making pottery, painting landscapes and becoming involved with the vibrant artistic community in Cairns. Friendships with writer Xavier Herbert and artist Ray Crooke date from this period. In 1962 at Karumba, an Ansett destination in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Percy met Dick Roughsey (Goobalathaldin), a Lardil man from Mornington Island. (At the time, Percy was painting a mermaid on the bottom of the Karumba Lodge swimming pool.) He encouraged Dick to paint professionally and they embarked on a close friendship and collaboration in art and writing that lasted until Dick's death in 1985. Percy said that his friendship with Dick Roughsey OBE was a key inspiration of his life. Percy's passionate interest in Aboriginal rock-art dates from his first visit to the Split Rock shelters near Laura after they were reported by road workers constructing the Peninsula Development Road in 1960. Having been overwhelmed by the beauty of the paintings at Split Rock he sought out likely rock-shelters on his regular flights over the spectacular sandstone escarpments and gorges of the Laura Basin. These early, unofficial aerial surveys became the basis of a lifelong study of Quinkan rock-art. Percy sought to understand and record the Aboriginal knowledge that lies behind the rock-art, and enlisted the help of Dick Roughsey in this endeavour. Roughsey was able to break the ice with some Aboriginal men of the Laura Cooktown district, members of a generation of Aboriginal elders who have long since passed away. Willy Long (Toomacullin of the Olkola people), George Pegus (Joogamu of the Gugu-Yalanji people), Harry Mole and Caesar Lee Cheu (of Gugu-Warra clans), Jerry Shepherd and Joe Musgrave (Kuku-Thaypan people) and Mitchell McGreen (Papi-tharagen, described by P Trezise as a Gugu-Aalmura man from Barrow Point) were among the Aborigines who contributed to the rock-art documentation projects and, in doing so, immeasurably enriched Percy's life and work. As well as the insights provided into Aboriginal culture of the Laura Cooktown region, the accounts of these very resilient and distinguished men, as related in various of Percy's publications, record some of the brutal personal impacts of colonisation on the Indigenous people of Cape York Peninsula. …
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