Conversations: Meaghan's connections to family, town and country

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My guest is Megan Catrack Harris.

Megan grew up in a little town in Western Victoria.

As a teenager, she fell in love with a boy at school

and they ended up having a baby together when Megan was just 16.

Both their families were supportive.

This new bub was a delight for them all.

But the rest of the town sometimes saw things differently.

Megan's partner was Aboriginal and she's white.

And being part of a multicultural family

shifted the way Megan understood herself and her country.

Megan spent many years as a social worker in regional Australia

before moving to the city and becoming an academic.

Her essay collection is called Memories and Elephants,

the Art of Casual Racism.

Hi, Megan.

Hello.

Tell me about the town that you grew up in.

What's its history? What do you know?

It's an interesting town.

It's Robinvale's a soldier settlement.

If we want to classify it, you know, post-invasion.

So what a soldier sentiment was was after the World Wars,

soldiers were allocated blocks of land to grow grapes or citrus,

predominantly grapes around Robinvale.

And, you know, that sort of was the start of the town.

Prior to that, there has always been a strong Aboriginal presence

along the Murray River for, you know, time immemorial.

And it's a very multicultural town, so large Aboriginal population.

And then, you know, after in the 50s and beyond,

Italian and Greek migrants settled, growing vegetables,

Polynesian people in the 70s and, you know, and it goes on.

It's a very multicultural community.

So was it that agricultural industry that drew your mum and dad

to the town or what brought your parents to that part of the world?

Yeah, originally, my father's family were farming people, originally.

By the time I was born, they were no longer on the land.

We were townies, not farmers or blockies.

They were all distinct groups.

And my mum also was from a farming family in Ouyen.

A small farm, not your traditional farm.

My mum's grandmother didn't let them cut down trees.

She thought that wasn't good for the environment.

My mum's 86 and we're talking about her grandmother.

So that was almost subsistence farming for them.

Your nanopops family were hardworking people.

Where did your mum start working while she was still at school?

She worked at the local shops from the age of about 12.

She put herself through teachers' college in the days

when, you know, you said you'd go where you were posted

and you'd got paid a, you know, a stipend to go,

which I know she sent back to help with the other siblings.

She was one of the four big kids before the war

and then there were three little kids after the war.

And so a very strong...

Yeah, both my parents instilled a very strong work ethic into us

without even really talking about it,

just by being who they were.

When your mum took herself off to teachers' college in Ballarat,

why did she have a run-in with the boy who ran the college hostel?

Yeah.

So mum had come from Oyen to Ballarat,

but, you know, in those days she might as well have gone to New York,

I feel, you know, and she got called in this day.

She'd been cleaning the room and she'd tied the curtains

that faced the main road in knots, you know, to dust around them.

And she was called in and threatened to be sent home

because that wasn't acceptable.

It was apparently a very low-class thing to do.

To tie your curtains up. Yeah.

Yeah.

So mum basically stood her ground and said,

you can't send me home for tying up the curtains

because no one in our small town will believe that's what happened.

I'm staying.

And she stayed and she was a teacher for 50 years, you know.

After she got her qualification,

despite that outrage at the curtain tying,

what new appointment did she take up?

So mum taught at each of the schools in Robin Vale

from the 50s onwards.

And in the 70s she took up a position

of the first Aboriginal resource teacher in the state of Victoria.

And she tells the story that no one else wanted the job,

so there was no competition.

She was wonderful in that role.

What was she doing that was different than what would have happened before?

So there was a dedicated room, resource room for the Aboriginal kids.

Mum worked with, you know, around academic stuff,

but also around attendance and also connecting with the families.

And she really just shaped the role.

She is very well known and loved in the Aboriginal community.

Everyone knows Mrs. Harris, you know.

And they call her Mrs. Harris because of that school overhang.

And years later she'd say, call me Maureen and they'd say,

I can't miss the Harris.

But that came at a cost because it wasn't a position

that was accepted by many of the other staff.

And I know she didn't have an easy time within her colleagues, yeah.

Where did her impulse to take on that kind of role

and work with the Aboriginal community on that sort of equal footing

rather than a paternalistic one?

Where did that come from in her, do you think?

I've thought about that a lot because both my parents have that.

And I didn't realise until, as we don't, that it was unusual.

And I think my parents, my mother's family were very much

almost outliers in the community.

They were very close family.

They had a very healthy distrust for authority

and anyone with money.

Very proud working people.

And always, all of them, always for the underdog.

Similarly, you know, my father's family, we had a...

My father particularly and his father.

We had an experience just a month ago

that really reminded me of that, as you say,

not paternalistic connection that my family has always had

with the Aboriginal community in our town.

Where one of my uncles passed away, my dad's youngest brother,

and he was a bachelor and he lived with some disabilities.

And so, you know, back in the olden days,

he was in like a sheltered workshop.

And when that closed down, he came back to Rumpa.

My dad looked after him.

Mum and dad always looked after him.

Got him set up in his own flat and that sort of thing.

But before that, there was sort of a time when, OK,

where will he live?

And the Aboriginal co-op in the town gave him

an accommodation at the local Aboriginal men's hostel,

which was so wonderful because he didn't qualify.

He wasn't Aboriginal.

But because, you know, the connection with our family

and the community.

So when Ken, my uncle, passed earlier this year,

he had a, you know, a small amount of money

that went to the siblings.

And dad said to me,

I'd like to make a don't make somehow donate this

to the Aboriginal community

because they gave Ken a home when he needed it.

So we thought about it.

And where he stayed was called Harry Pettit Hostel.

And Harry Pettit's son is now a senior elder,

Uncle Buck Pettit.

So that brought a generator.

And my eldest son presented it to Uncle Buck

just to use in the men's groups

in any way that might be useful.

And something that Uncle Buck said really made me realise

that this has always been a relationship of reciprocity.

He said, oh, everyone learnt to drive in Jack Harris' truck.

And that was my grandfather.

So he'd be like 120 if he was still alive.

So I just loved that reciprocity in their equal relationship.

They helped us as much as we tried to contribute.

Yeah.

So with your mum as a teacher, Megan,

what kind of student were you at school?

I didn't have a very illustrious career at Romba High.

I was pretty good at Romba Consolidated though.

Mum always says I went home in year four

and said, I think you should let me leave school.

They've taught me everything that I need to know.

Check, done. Done that.

But I was a smart kid, I will say that.

And I was probably thought of as a bit of a smart alec

in my teenage, early teenage years.

But again, it's something you reflect on as you get older,

but I just didn't engage with education at school.

I was interested and I read a lot and I always have.

And I always thought I would do something more academically,

but I didn't engage.

Your elder brother and sister went off to boarding school.

Yeah. Why didn't you follow suit?

They tried hard to. I just didn't want to.

I was a baby by like seven years and I just, you know,

I had my basketball and my friends and I was like, no, thank you.

And yet they loved it.

Well, tell me about some of the ways you spent your time

outside of school.

Like what role did the local swimming pool play?

Your childhood.

A huge role.

It was the centre of the town for many kids

and especially for us because my uncle, for many years,

my uncle, Bernie managed and his wife, Eli,

managed the local pool.

So, you know, it was kind of the hub of the town

and we had the run of it to the point where it often,

Bernie would get me to mine the pool and work in the pool.

And so like, he might be fixing a tally at the back

and I'd be minding the pool and I'd be on the microphone,

banning people for doing bombs, selling razors and crunches.

And it was fabulous.

And he wildly overpaid us because he was such a generous man.

But it was such a wonderful experience.

What I often think now, could you imagine the risk management issues?

The 12-year-old in charge with the public swimming pool.

So, by the time you moved on to high school, Megan,

who did you fall in love with as a teenager?

So, William and I, we really did.

We fell in love and we had a wonderful relationship.

What did you like about him as a teenager?

He was handsome, good at sport, great character, kind.

Yeah, and he's all those things still.

And were you welcomed by his family?

Of course, yeah.

One thing I think that I've been privileged to know

is how absolutely welcoming Aboriginal families and people are

beyond what many Australians deserve, I kind of think.

But yes, very much so and I still feel very much welcomed within the family.

And what about your mum and dad with him?

Yeah, they love him.

Yeah, they loved him.

Still do.

So, what do you remember feeling when you found out at 15, 16

that you were pregnant?

You know, I never really thought about that much.

I just never really doubted that I would be fine, you know.

I think I was overconfident.

I had a loving family around us.

And while it was probably obviously not in their plan,

they didn't miss a beat.

They said, OK, so what do we do?

This is what we do.

We support and we get on and we celebrate.

And I never doubted that I could look after a baby.

What was she like when she came along?

She was such a little star, like, you know,

because it was sort of, probably I didn't realise at the time,

but it probably was the talk of the town, you know.

But, you know, she was the first grandchild for my family

and the first granddaughter for Will's family.

And so she was absolutely doted on.

And she was a little strong personality right from the start.

So she made sure she made some space.

Yeah.

So there was a lot of love and a lot of support at home

with your family and with your partner's family.

But what sort of reactions did you and he get

when you were out together in town?

It's interesting because, you know, they say the good thing

about a small town is everyone knows you.

And the bad thing about a small town is everyone knows you.

And I think to a certain degree, as a young mum,

I was protected because everyone knew me.

Everyone knew me.

They knew my family.

Everyone knew Will and his family too.

They were very well respected people,

very connected in the community.

And so there was sort of a comfort in that,

which doesn't mean we didn't come across racism,

but it would be more casual outside.

And it wasn't until, you know, as years go by

and we hear things that perhaps there was, you know,

there were reactions behind closed doors.

But, you know, I was oblivious to that.

I was, that's their problem kind of thing.

Did people say stuff in front of your kids?

We had experiences at the Mujo show

when we took the kids to see the agriculture shed,

which, you know, was of no thrill to us,

because, you know, we're from the country.

I'd rather go and look at the food stalls, but we did that.

And the kids, you know, the cows and all that sort of thing.

And when I think of it, it was just,

it was almost like a caricature of this farmer sitting on a chair.

And as we walked past, this was in the 90s,

so the Marbo decision was hot news.

And he said, have you heard, he said, just to the air,

have you heard about Marbo?

It stands for money available, blacks only.

And I just felt like all the air go out of the space around us.

And this is the sort of thing where you look at each other

and decisions made, are you going to let that one go?

What, you know, we just looked at each other

and looked at the kids and said, come on, let's go.

As we left one of us, joke, we said,

what, what he could do with his poxy sheep?

But yes, often things that are said,

one thing that a friend told me that I didn't know,

my mum was at the local doctors,

just after Shay was born, my oldest daughter,

and someone, another person in the town, said to her,

oh, and my brother and sister were at uni by that stage.

Oh, you must be so proud of Mark and Vivian.

And mum said, I'm proud of all of my children.

I'm really proud of Megan too.

And that was obviously a little slight,

but I'd never hear about it unless someone else told me.

Yeah.

When your first daughter, Shay, was still a toddler,

you took her along to a GP, just she had a runny nose.

And then a stranger turned up at the door the next day.

What was going on?

This was an example about feeling,

about being a bit protected when you're known.

So I took her to the GP with a runny nose

and there was a locum who didn't know me.

He asked lots of questions and I answered them.

You know, she was all dressed up for a day in town

and we went home with probably an antibiotic

that they pumped into them regularly then.

The next day, yes, a stranger arrived on the doorstep

and it was a worker from Child Protection

coming to check on her.

I asked, well, why?

And she said, oh, the doctor's just worried

because you're so young.

So at that time, my parents were on a holiday

driving around Australia and I let her in

and she looked around and I made her a cup of tea

and we had a chat.

But it didn't really hit me until later

when I spoke to mum on the phone.

Mum was really worried.

She asked me so many questions.

She'd rung from some stop along the way.

What did they say and what did they say next?

And what did they say they're going to do?

And, you know, reflecting back, I know that I was confident.

I was able to advocate for myself.

I was white and I think all of those things were in my favour.

But it made me always realise how close, you know,

the whole judgement thing is.

You make the point, Megan, that middle-class mothers

are now encouraged to say when they're not coping

and there's like this whole world of internet memes

and Facebook posts of mothers saying,

oh, my God, cereal for dinner or it's four o'clock,

I need a wine.

Why does that bug you so much?

There was a real run of those memes and honestly, I do,

I really advocate for let's dispel the myth of the superwoman

or having to do it all.

But from where I'm sitting and still, who I am,

when I would hear them, I would think,

don't you know how privileged you are to be able to joke about it,

to be able to make light of not coping

or admit you forgot to pick the kids up?

Because if you were a young mum

or if you were an Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander mum,

if you were a mum with mental health issues,

if you were anyway under child protection's radar,

you are not joking about that stuff.

And it got, it really got, I kept thinking,

someone should address that.

And then I thought, well, I'm someone,

I'm going to address it.

And I wrote the first essay.

So these sort of slights and stupid comments

and snarky remarks that were on your radar in town

as your kids were younger,

how did it shift though as they got older

and they were going out into the world

and did you feel you had to arm them in some way

for what they might experience?

How did you go about doing that?

Well, they were always very politically aware,

like we were a very political family,

very much involved in Aboriginal activism, all of us.

But one thing that really I was very clear about

when the boys got to be teenagers

was to be protective of them.

I used to say to them, don't argue with teachers

and don't argue with coppers.

You will never win.

If ever you're stopped by the police

and there's any issue, just get in, do what they tell you.

Because we were so aware of racial profiling

and issues around that.

And they had those experiences.

What sort of things have they told you?

One of the examples was when they were teenagers,

they were out in a group and it was a few years ago now.

So the fashion of wearing the shorts quite low

and showing a bit of the Calvin Klein's or jockies or whatever.

And one of the police officers said to one of my sons,

pull your pants up.

And he said, why is it illegal or something a bit cheeky?

He said, get in the van.

So he did, he got in the van.

He said to me later, I just did,

I remember what he said, mom, I just got in the van.

And the other son belted at home flat out

to get Cyrus, my husband, to go up and get him.

And again, who you are shouldn't matter.

But when my husband, Cyrus, got there, their stepdad,

that police officer came out and said, oh, yeah, he can go.

I didn't realise who he was.

So-and-so coaches, his footy team, he said, he's a good kid.

You know, does it, do you have to be someone connected

to someone to be treated with, you know, basic respect?

But yeah, we had examples like that.

You know, one of my sons being pulled over.

So being pulled over and whose car, mine,

where did you get it, I bought it,

how did you pay for it, money?

I've been working since I was 18 years old.

Oh, you know, you's have got better cars than us now.

Sort of, it happens still, you know.

And just that fear that they could be unsafe is very real.

Meakin, you began your career as a community worker

with an Aboriginal-run co-op

and then studied social work and eventually moved to the city.

Is it a different thing being a social worker in the country

than in the city?

Absolutely, absolutely.

In fact, I think the reason that I did my PhD

was when I went to work at the mainstream organisation,

I realised, oh, other people, other workers don't really understand.

They haven't had that experience.

There's a lot that you develop as a rural, regional social worker.

I think it's a great skill building

because we're it sometimes.

We have to be everything and have numerous roles.

And it's not as defined.

You know, I would have experiences like going to a cafe

and the owner would ask me to come at the back to show me something

and they wanted some social work intervention,

but they didn't want anyone to know they were seeing someone.

That kind of thing was quite common.

People knew where you lived, they would come and see you.

And that's very different than in the city context, yeah.

When I first moved to Mojira,

the team were trying to engage with a young Aboriginal mum

to give off her support, but she didn't want to engage,

she wasn't letting them in.

So they asked me to go as the team leader.

And I'll never forget, I didn't know her at all.

I didn't know her name.

I knocked on the door and she opened the door and she looked at me

and she said, do you know William?

And I knew instantly she was placing me in the connection to her

and also testing me to see how I responded to that.

And that was important.

And I said, well, I hope so because we've got three kids.

And she said, she laughed, she said, come in.

And, you know, some people that are very big on boundaries

might go down there, you know, try not to answer,

try to move the question away.

But I thought very clearly then, and I feel very strongly that

when we work with people, we expect them to put their life on the table.

And we have to give something.

It has to be reciprocal to a degree.

And I say this, you know, it doesn't have to be you giving your address

or your personal details, but you have to give something of yourself.

I imagine it's one of those professions where people get completely burnt out

because of the emotional demands and seeing people in their toughest circumstances.

Has that happened to you?

That feeling of, I just can't do this anymore.

I can't be meeting people in this place anymore.

I don't, I would say no, but that doesn't mean not on a certain day at a certain time,

when it's three o'clock and you think, oh, gosh, you know.

But I guess one thing I like to reflect on is,

in working in the Aboriginal community, as a lot of my experience has been,

Aboriginal people don't get the luxury of switching off the activism

or deciding they're not going to take on racism today

or they're not going to look at structural inequity today.

It's relentless. It's everyday life.

And I kind of try to be informed by that, that for me, social work is a vocation.

This is, it's a big part of who I am and it's a big part of how I try to live my life in the best way.

And also social work is such a broad profession that, you know,

you can be in direct practice or you can move into research for a while

or you can be in community development.

It's not all just one role.

You're a grandmother now, Megan.

Yes, I've been a grandmother for 20 years.

What's the payoff of having kids young, I guess?

You look far too young to be a grandmother.

What kind of man are you?

Well, what's the role that you take or how do you see it compared to being a mum?

Well, well, as a man, I think, you know, you get a level of authority.

You know, like my mum's got the authority, but then I'm next.

I've got the authority.

We are a very, very connected family.

So my two little girls were aunties when they were born, you know.

So actually while I'm here in Brisbane, my granddaughter,

my 20-year-old granddaughter, Grace, is looking after her two aunties.

Who are younger than her?

Who are younger than her because Cyrus is at school camp.

So yes, so I guess I'm Nan Meig.

Nan, we're all very close.

I don't have the day-to-day obviously care of the grandkids.

That's the different thing.

But I get the advantages of all the, you know, love and connection.

And you and Will separated a long time ago.

Oh, long time ago.

You married Cyrus, you've got two more children.

How are things with his family though?

Do those connections stay?

Yeah, so my two little girls, we call them the city mice.

So I'm, I was born in Mulgera.

Her and Zini are the city mice.

And they, you know, they have been camping with the big kids

and Will and his mum.

They call her Nan.

And she considers them grandchildren.

So just recently they were planning a trip home.

And Margaret Nan said to Shay,

oh, don't forget those two little city girls.

They'll be wanting to come.

And so, you know, it's wonderful.

There are these two little Parsi girls.

Cyrus is an Indian Parsi embraced by this original community

and also the Tongan parentage.

So we're very multicultural.

I love hearing about your Australian family.

It sounds like a riot, like a great family to be a part of.

Thank you so much, Megan, for sharing your story and conversations.

Thank you so much for having me.

You've been listening to a podcast of Conversations with Sarah Konoski.

For more Conversations interviews,

head to the website, ABC.net.au slash Conversations.

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