Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows Bruce 'Lapa’ Stewart addressing patrons at a Sydney RSL club. In interview he talks about the history of the La Perouse United Football Club, which plays Rugby League football, and about his early experiences as a player in the 1950s. As a narrator talks about the all-Black team of the 1930s and the multicultural club of the 1950s, archival team photographs and photographs of the beach shantytown where the La Perouse community lived are shown. Stewart reminisces about the 1950s, when team members were accepted regardless of their background. The final scenes show a game between La Perouse and Mascot.

Educational value points

• Indigenous Australians have lived at what is now known as La Perouse, located at the entrance to Botany Bay, for thousands of years. Their appearance was noted by Captain Cook in 1770 and later by the French explorer La Perouse. The local Indigenous population was decimated by smallpox, which was inadvertently brought by La Perouse and his crew, who camped in the area for 6 weeks in 1788. Missionaries arrived in 1885, and in 1889 the New South Wales Aborigines Mission was established at La Perouse. Large numbers of displaced Aboriginal people from along the south coast of NSW moved onto the Mission in the 1940s and 50s. There is still a significant Indigenous community at La Perouse.

• The clip gives an example of a sporting club that provides a sense of community and interracial acceptance. The club began as an all-Black team but during the Great Depression in the 1930s Aboriginal people at La Perouse were joined by hundreds of non-Indigenous unemployed homeless people. The shared experience of poverty united the Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and the La Perouse United Football Club was formed. The Club now has ten teams, embracing members from many different cultural backgrounds.

• Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were brought together during the Depression years at La Perouse and lived in makeshift settlements such as those seen in the clip. They formed a close-knit community due to their common experience of unemployment and their isolation from mainstream society. When the Depression eased, the non-Indigenous inhabitants moved away and in the 1950s the huts were bulldozed by the local council.

• Rugby League football, seen in the clip, is one of the two codes of rugby, the other being Rugby Union. While sharing a common origin they now have different rules. Rugby League is played with two teams of 13 players, the aim being to carry the ball up the field towards the opposing team’s goal, where the ball is grounded to score a 'try’, earning the right to attempt to 'convert’ the try by kicking a goal.

This clip starts approximately 4 minutes into the documentary.

Bruce ‘Lapa’ Stewart addresses patrons at a Sydney RSL club.
Bruce Hello. Can you hear me now? Well, I’ll be – I’ll be damned. Anyways, ladies and gentlemen, the A-grade, they give us heart attacks today, watching them.

Bruce is interviewed in front of an Aboriginal flag.
Bruce When I played football – I played football because I loved the game. Never earnt no money out of it. But having fun, and, well, you know, with all me mates I’ve got.

A sequence of photographs appear on screen showing scenes from La Peruse during the depression.
Narrator Bruce, like many of the Lapa elders, started playing footy back in the ‘50s. At that time, Lapa was a united club. But it all began back in the 1930s as an all-blacks team. My grandfather, old Bert Longbottom, played in this team. He, like many of the locals, lived in a tin hut on Lapa Beach in what’s now known as “the mission”. In those early mission days, government policy made it impossible for blackfellas to integrate into Australian society. But during the Depression years, Lapa became home to blacks, whites, and many new migrants, all sharing the common bond of poverty. From this bond formed La Perouse United Football Club, fielding players from all cultural backgrounds.

Bruce is interviewed on a football field.
Bruce We went to school with Italians, we went to school with Greeks, and of course the kids from the Chinese gardens, which have always been down there for years and years and years. We went to school with them. There was even Russians. And them blokes all played football with us, you know. I can remember when we all used to drink at (inaudible) Pub and some Kooris is come in from the country and they thought it was a big surprise to see us drinking with white fellas, because that’s the way they were. But no, we never had any troubles with it, you know. If you could play football and whether you were black, white or pregnant and you wanted to play for Lapa, we’d accept it. Yeah.

The La Perouse and Mascot teams play a match.
Coach That’s why you look dejected, shit like that. Get ourselves up. We spoke earlier about our attitudes, alright? It showed straightaway.