Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows interviews with Harold Blair’s wife Dorothy Blair, her sister Florence Trevail, and Harold’s sister Meryl Thompson. Intercut with the interviews are still black-and-white photographs of Harold and Dorothy, together and separate, taken in the early days of their relationship. The voice of Harold Blair, who was a well-known tenor, is heard on the soundtrack.

Educational value points

• Harold Blair, singer and Aboriginal activist, was born at Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve in Queensland in 1924. Blair’s singing talent was discovered while he was working as a tractor driver in a sugar mill in the early 1940s. In 1945 he was one of the first Indigenous Australians to sing on national radio. After graduation from Melbourne’s Melba Conservatorium, Blair (1924–76) went to the USA to continue his voice studies. In 1951 a strenuous tour with the then Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) damaged his voice and he took up teaching. In 1962 he started the Aboriginal Children’s Project to provide holidays for mission children. In 1964 Blair stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a Labor candidate. In January 1976 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.

• The clip reveals the negative attitudes expressed by members of Blair’s and his wife Dorothy’s families towards their so-called 'mixed’ marriage. Blair married Dorothy Eden, who was also studying at the Melba Conservatorium, in 1949. In the 1940s the so-called White Australia Policy, resulting from the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, was still in place. Indigenous Australians were not granted full rights as citizens until 1963 and were, in the 1940s, subject to restrictive regulations. In such an environment racist attitudes gained support and this may explain the fears and doubts expressed by Florence and Meryl in the clip.

• The Blairs’ marriage attracted a great deal of media attention. Some media items showed racist attitudes, even though Harold Blair was by then well known as a tenor singer. Harold and Dorothy had two children, Nerida and Warren, and the family remained close until Harold’s death in 1976.

• Following his success as a singer, Blair was often featured in the press. Many articles emphasised his success in 'the white man’s world’, including articles published in the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board’s magazine, Dawn. Published from 1952 to 1975, Dawn was distributed to all NSW Aboriginal stations and reserves. Pastor Doug Nicholls and, for a time, artist Albert Namatjira, were also taken up by the media as Aboriginal 'success’ stories.

• The clip provides an example of the work of documentary filmmaker Steve Thomas, whose education includes an Honours degree in science. Thomas worked in the UK and Jamaica before coming to Australia and beginning a career in filmmaking. As well as the documentary Harold (1994), which was nominated for an Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award in the year of its release, Thomas has made Black Man’s Houses about Tasmanian Aboriginal history, and The Hillmen – A Soccer Fable (1996), which won an AFI Award for Best Documentary. Thomas has lectured in documentary filmmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts since 1998.

This clip starts approximately 12 minutes into the documentary.

Dorothy is being interviewed in a room set up for a piano rehearsal. The clip is interlaced with images of Dorothy and Harold from their time at the conservatorium in the 1950s.

Dorothy Blair The first time I saw Harold, he was standing at the bottom of these great big steps at the conservatorium and ah, he was having fun with the ah, the other girl students and I was just standing over to the side just watching him and then when I started full-time at the conservatorium, we got to know one another and of course I was too embarrassed to say very much. So I made my mother go all the way into town to ask Harold, ‘Would you care to come out to dinner?’. And so he arrived in the Lloyds car dressed up in his leather gloves and everything and, so then at the end of the night, we were beginning to wonder whether he was going to go home at all. The other guests said to mum apparently, ‘Dorothy’s gone. She’s gone.’

Outdoors, there are yellow flowers in sweeping bushland scenery, and more photographs of Dorothy and Harold together in their youth. A romantic operatic tune plays over the footage. Dorothy’s sister Florence is interviewed in her lounge room.

Florence Trevail It was rather a shock to the whole family. I just could not see it working. They’re a race that have their own culture and if one walked in here now I would think, 'Marvellous’. I would ask him to sit down, I have no colour bar at all um, perhaps I do believe black should stay with black.

Meryl Thompson, Harold’s sister, is interviewed outdoors with trees and bird calls in the background.

Meryl Thompson His life-long friends told Harold that he shouldn’t marry a white woman and that if he did, they would have nothing more to do with him, and like there was a lot of pressure put on Harold over this and it even came from our mother.