Exploring The Postcolonial Blues: The Weight Of History And The Search For Belonging

Kempsey, situated in the Macleay Valley on the Mid North Coast of NSW, is a sleepy rural town. Small in population, the region is famous for producing several Australian icons, including Slim Dusty, Akubra Hats, and Milo. It's a place full of stunning natural beauty, divided by the Macleay River; mountain ranges in the distance, rolling fields of green, and pristine beaches in the valley's seaside towns of South West Rocks, Hat Head and Crescent Head. As I write this, Kempsey is currently taking a breath after minor flooding as a result of ex-cyclone Alfred and reeling from a recent protest by Dunghutti elders that shut down a public appearance of controversial Liberal senator Jacinta Price. In contrast to its breathtaking natural scenery, it is also a town with deep racial scarring, a troubling crime rate, issues with substance abuse, and limited employment opportunities. 

Kempsey is my hometown and, like many people who retreat to the metropolis from the country, it's a place with which I have a conflicted relationship. My experience of growing up in Kempsey as a queer person of mixed racial heritage has informed Second Idol's latest single, Postcolonial Blues, a song that reckons with the complex histories of colonialism and what it means to be Australian.

Postcolonial Blues started as a stream-of-consciousness ramble and a primal guitar riff. As I started recording the demo, I found myself staring at an old photograph on my corkboard of my aunt and grandfather in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in the 60s. It got me thinking about my existence as an Australian, here and now, and how the limbs of my family tree are deeply rooted in and indebted to colonialism. 

You and I

We are not so different

You and I

We wonder where we fit

It's a long way from the Macleay

To the banks of Colombo Harbour

Another mongrel coming through

What am I to you?

You and me

We run to the sea

And we won't turn back

We won't

Another mongrel coming through

A postcolonial mess for you

My parents are immigrants who came to Australia for a better life. My dad came to Australia for a second chance amid British austerity. The son of a Scottish dentist who was stationed in Greece in World War II and an East Anglian opera singer who ran a Caledonian choir in South London, he completed his HSC at TAFE and, thanks to the Whitlam government, trained as a GP and obstetrician.

My mother hails from the Burgher community of Sri Lanka, descendants of the Dutch and Portuguese who colonised what was then Ceylon and intermarried with local Singhalese and Tamils. She left the capital, Colombo, in her late teens and trained as a nurse in the UK before immigrating to Australia, where she met my father. Much of my mother's family left Sri Lanka in the second half of the twentieth century in the aftermath of the country's independence from the British Empire, and the outbreak of civil war between the Singhalese and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers. I've not yet had the chance to visit Sri Lanka, where my Mum grew up, but her stories are vivid and elicit a sense of longing in me.

Back to country NSW. Growing up in Kempsey as a biracial person was challenging. I witnessed racism firsthand, including ignorant comments said to my mother, and observed discrimination towards Indigenous people. I occupied another in-between position as I benefited from the privilege of my father's status as a white doctor and local obstetrician, albeit with the 'foreign' looking last name. Having a 'q' in your name really tends to confuse some people.

When I was around 6 or 7, I remember being at the local IGA with my brother and Mum. We were packing groceries into the car and were approached by a man asking if we were heading to Burnt Bridge (the site of an ex-mission). As soon as my Mum started speaking, and he heard her accent, he quickly realised we weren't mob and was apologetic. I remember being confused at the time.

As a child, in summer, my parents would bundle my brother and I into the car, and we'd make the 30-minute drive following the path of the glistening Macleay River to the beach town of South West Rocks. Driving along the river, we would pass an area called Kinchela and what was previously the site of Kinchela Boys Home. At the time, excited by the prospects of sea and sand, I was blissfully oblivious to the site's history of pain and suffering. I now know that Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home (KBH) was run by the NSW Government for over 50 years (1924 – 1970), to house Aboriginal boys forcibly removed from their families and assimilate them into white Australian society. Conditions at KBH were harsh, and it was an environment where abuse, including physical, sexual and psychological, were commonplace. It is only in recent years that more awareness of the injustices that occurred at Kinchela has grown, thanks in large part to the work of survivors and the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation. 

These days, when I drive past Kinchela, following the road around the river bend, I experience eerie feelings of sadness. Physical scars are still visible in a large Moreton Bay fig tree, a tree that has swallowed the metal links where boys were chained as punishment. Reflecting on sites such as Kinchela, I question how to move forward as an Australian after the rejection of The Voice. How do we collectively acknowledge and heal the pains of the past? How do I reconcile my relatively comfortable and privileged life that has been afforded through the hard work of my immigrant parents in a nation built upon the pain of others? How can I be at peace in my Australian-ness? 

This damn rodeo town

Was built upon

The blood of broken hearts

A teardrop in the sea

We'll watch 

As Empires

Keep on falling

After school, I caught what was deemed by many to be the 'roughest' school bus in town. My brother and I attended the local Catholic school (the poorest one in the diocese), and our bus also carried a lot of kids from other schools home to an area inhabited by predominantly Indigenous families. Many times, kids would come up to me asking where I was from, wanting to know if I was Dunghutti or from another Country. They weren't usually prepared for me to explain that I looked the way I did because half of my heritage was from a small tear-shaped island the size of Tasmania below India. As I progressed through high school, I watched my Indigenous peers drop out of high school, be expelled, or become mothers and fathers at a young age. Meanwhile, coming from a medical family, it was drilled into me that getting pregnant would pretty much equivocate to my life being over and forfeiting all worldly ambition, and that my ultimate path to success was paved with good grades and a university education.

I suffered through depression and anxiety as a teenager, something I have continued to live with on and off throughout my adulthood. I was quiet and reserved, apart from instances where I felt like I could express myself such as in drama and art class or amongst a close group of friends. As teenagers do, I found solace in music. I grew up singing in choirs and playing the piano. As I began to realise the complexities of my identity more consciously, which also included queerness, I discovered rock music and was drawn to artists like Placebo, PJ Harvey, Interpol, and The Kills. These musicians spoke to my feelings of angst and otherness, and they made me want to pick up a guitar and spill my guts through a cacophony of distorted chords. For the first time, I felt as though I had a conduit through which to channel my feelings. 

I was shy in the classroom, and in group situations, I often felt intimidated. On a few occasions, while on excursions to schools in neighbouring towns, when I was asked a question by my peers and I didn't respond quickly enough, there were snide and jokey responses such as 'She mustn't speak English!'. At age 10, while briefly attending a school in the neighbouring town of Port Macquarie, I was questioned by a couple of my fellow students whether I was Indigenous. Before I could answer, I was quickly and cruelly told that I didn't belong there. Cut to a post-9/11 world, and comments such as 'thieving Arab' were then flung against my brother and myself. 

In Kempsey, it seemed that many people struggled to know where my family fit, and in turn, I struggled to know where I fit within my family. There is a pain that I'm sure other biracial people and those from diverse backgrounds feel when it comes to belonging. That you never feel like you truly fit or are good enough, not Anglo enough or not brown enough. In my extended family, though unintentional, it felt like emotional ping pong when, without missing a beat, one side would say, 'you look more like your father' (white), and on the other hand, 'you look like your mother' (brown).

While there is a lingering bitterness in me for what I endured and observed growing up, and sadness about the inequalities and troubles that persist in my hometown, Postcolonial Blues isn't about anger. It's a search for meaning. It's about longing for belonging, and it's an acknowledgement that our existence in Australia is complex.

I speak about my hometown, but across the country, there is important work to be done to heal wounds and to come together over what unites, not divides us. Despite my setbacks, there's still something that touches my soul when I visit Kempsey and am on Dunghutti Country. It's in the land, the waters and the sky. It's a place where I began to discover who I am and laid the foundations of my worldly experience, where I found my compassion and my desire to seek catharsis through the beautiful chaos and fragility of rock music. 

Kate Farquharson is the vocalist and guitarist of Sydney band Second Idol. They will be playing two upcoming shows on Saturday March 29 at Bootleggers, Newtown, and Saturday April 5 at Crowbar.

Honourable thanks to Nicole Kennedy and Liz Freeland.