He is known as one of Australia’s finest actors and for roles in classic films like ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Wake in Fright’. But, this week, Jack Thompson spoke publicly about a little-known chapter of his life, his formative experience working as a teenage stockman in the remote Northern Territory.
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00:00Singing a film icon onto the stage, Jack Thompson opens up on the year that changed his life.
00:11It was a wonderful adventure and it was an adventure that lasted me my life in terms of influence.
00:20The star of breakthrough Australian cinema hits, now 83 years old,
00:25Thompson travelled to Darwin to deliver the annual Vincent Hlingiari lecture
00:29on his time as a territory stockman on the vast Elchidra station when he was just 14
00:35and the characters he met along the way.
00:37Johnny Driver told me very early, Jack, there's no work here for boys.
00:46And I discovered how right that was.
00:49A fierce advocate for First Nations people and an adopted member of Arnhem Land's Goumach clan,
00:54it was during his time mustering cattle that he made lasting connections with Indigenous Australia.
01:00I was the only white person on the stock camp and they looked after me like I was their son.
01:07They recognised that I had no idea of anything to do with cattle
01:13and very little idea of what to do with horses.
01:16Thompson's time on the land came ten years before the Wave Hill walk-off,
01:20a pivotal moment in Australia's land rights history
01:23where Guringi stockmen stopped work to protest their meagre wages.
01:27I think it's such a privilege to me to have been so early associated in that way.
01:36Descendants of the Guringi stockmen watched on
01:39as Thompson spoke about the ongoing fight for equal rights for First Nations Australians.
01:45I feel that we have to presume that there will be and work toward it
01:51because anything else is unthinkable to me.