Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Footy The La Perouse Way (2006)

A video which normally appears on this page did not load because the Flash plug-in was not found on your computer. You can download and install the free Flash plug-in then view the video. Or you can view the same video as a downloadable MP4 file without installing the Flash plug-in.

Email a link to this page
To:
CC:
Subject:
Body:
clip 'Lapa' education content clip 1

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

An RSL Club, and a raffle is taking place. Players from the La Perouse Panthers have gathered for the team’s fundraiser. Bruce 'Lapa’ Stewart, community elder and former La Perouse player, speaks into a microphone. Bruce talks to camera about his days of playing football. Photographs show the Lapa team in the 1930s as an all-Black team. Historical footage of tin huts on the beach, or the mission. Voice-over narration speaks of the common bond of poverty during the Depression. Bruce tells how the community became truly multicultural. Footage of La Perouse versus Mascot. A grade coach Chris ‘Offo’ Sait talks to his players.

Curator’s notes

A well documented transformation of the La Perouse Aboriginal community into a multicultural community.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

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.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer 'Lapa' from the documentary Footy The La Perouse Way as a high quality video download.

To play the downloadable video, you need QuickTime 7.0, VLC, or similar.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before downloading the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

This clip is available in the following configurations:

File nameSizeQualitySuitability
laperous1_pr.mp4 Large: 16.0MB High Optimised for full-screen display on a fast computer.
laperous1_bb.mp4 Medium: 7.5MB Medium Can be displayed full screen. Also suitable for video iPods.

Right-click on the links above to download video files to your computer.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer this clip in an embeddable format for personal or non-commercial educational use in full form on your own website or your own blog.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before embedding the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

Copy and paste the following code into your own web page to embed this clip: