e Coolbaroo Club
Directed by Roger Scholes
Written by Steve Kinnane, Lauren Marsh, Roger Scholes
Valhalla, Glebe, Sydney
Reviewed by Jenny Long
This hour-long documentary, also featuring at the Melbourne Film Festival and later to be screened on ABC-TV, gives an astonishing insight into the life of an East Perth dance club — the Coolbaroo Club — run by and for Aboriginal people and their (few) white supporters between 1946 and 1960.
It adds to the small but growing record of Aboriginal contemporary history and the social and political resistance to the virtual apartheid existing for much of the time since white colonisation. Many of the original participants in the club's life are interviewed in the film, giving a very real sense of its importance as a social venue and an Aboriginal political organisation.
The film gives a very good background to the situation for Aboriginal people in Perth in the post-World War II years. Under the racist official policies of "protection" and then integration, Aboriginal children were removed from their families and put to work as virtual slaves in white households.
In Perth, a curfew system was enforced to exclude Aboriginal people from the city centre after 6pm. Aboriginal women, many of whom were part of the stolen generation, often worked in service in rich households for a pittance and were forced to chance the curfew. They risked getting locked up if they were caught without the appropriate pass as they returned through the city to East Perth. Fraternising between Aboriginal and white people was an offence attracting police attention.
Aboriginal people, excluded from white social clubs and venues, began organising their own dances at a hall in East Perth — the Coolbaroo Club. The hugely popular dances were attended by Aboriginal people from all over the area. The club also attracted black musicians from around the world, including Nat King Cole, who could not perform for Aboriginal people in any other venue.
The club and Coolbaroo League were about more than claiming a space for socialising, however, and the club began organising tours to country towns where the racism was even worse. The league also organised its own monthly newspaper, which was mailed to subscribers all over the state. It became an effective political organisation speaking out on issues affecting Aboriginal people.
The documentary mentions some of the white supporters of the club, including musicians who played at the dances. A returned soldier recounts the different treatment accorded to Aboriginal veterans, given none of the benefits or recognition accorded to white veterans.
One disappointment is the dismissive attitude expressed towards the Communist Party of Australia, which the narrator acknowledges as the only political party interested in Aboriginal people's rights and in including them in the party. The CPA was the backbone of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) around Australia, an organisation that carried out ground-breaking work on Aboriginal rights.
Overall the documentary is powerful and inspiring, capturing an episode of Aboriginal history that is barely known. The film's music, by Lucky Oceans and performed by Lois Olney, is a wonderful accompaniment to the newsreels and re-enactments.