Barry Healy
The generation of anti-racist activists that came of age in the Redfern struggles at the end of the 1960s and early '70s have lost one of their stalwarts with the passing of Bob Bellear on March 16. Bellear was a true battler, one who struggled from rural poverty to become Australia's only Aboriginal judge, but who never lost contact with his roots.
Most cruelly, Bellear was killed by asbestos-related disease, which he contracted as an apprentice fitter and turner with the Royal Australian Navy in the '60s.
Bob Bellear personified much that is unspoken about Australian racism, those uncomfortable facts that our current federal government would like to see forgotten forever. For example: he was the grandson of a slave, a Vanuatu islander kidnapped and forced to toil in the Queensland cane fields.
Raised in northern New South Wales in the Aboriginal community near Mullumbimby, Bellear was exposed early to racism. He left school early with few work opportunities open to him as an Aborigine and drifted into the navy, where he began his career of Aboriginal "firsts". He was the first Aborigine to be promoted to the rank of petty officer.
Bellear was an active trade unionist when he worked in the metal industry around Sydney in the late 1960s, but his outrage at the treatment of the Aboriginal community in Redfern by the notoriously racist Redfern police convinced him to return to school, complete his higher school certificate and study law.
Redfern was a scene of battle at the time. Landlords were habitually throwing families out on the street. Bellear led activists in occupying houses in a campaign that eventually forced Gough Whitlam's federal Labor government to give the Redfern Block to the Aboriginal Housing Company (which Bellear helped found).
Bellear was part of the radical milieu that included the congregation at St Vincent's Catholic church in Redfern, led by the indomitable Mum Shirl. He remained loyal to that congregation throughout the years and was a close friend of its radical priest, Ted Kennedy.
Bellear was prominent in establishing the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Medical Service and was a director of Tranby College. Throughout his life he always did what he could for the poor and suffering. In 1987 he served as counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
His compassion knew no bounds; when the Polish government repressed Solidarity, Bellear attended planning meetings to organise protests in Sydney.
In 1996, he became the first Aborigine to be appointed a judge.
Bob Bellear took his last breaths wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, peacefully accompanied by his lifelong companion Kaye.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 23, 2005.
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