Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows Western Australian Police Sergeant Neil Gordon in Halls Creek explaining how he came to take on the informal adoption of a local Aboriginal boy. The boy and his grandmother had approached Gordon and requested that he take on the full-time care of the boy, to which he agreed after some deliberation. The footage of Sergeant Gordon beside a dry riverbed telling his story is intercut with footage of the boy and his friends playing pool at Gordon’s home, which they jokingly refer to as the ‘Halls Creek drop-in centre’.

Educational value points

• The clip shows the positive and ongoing relationship that exists between Sergeant Gordon and the young Aboriginal boys, in particular the teenage boy he has agreed to care for. The footage of Gordon in interview and observing the boy and his friends playing pool at Gordon’s house suggests how he enjoys his role as carer. Gordon’s comment that his caring role is ‘probably one of my great experiences in life’ reveals the importance of it to him personally.

• The interview with Gordon indicates that after his initial hesitation he has made a serious long-term commitment to the informal caring arrangement. Gordon explains that when negotiating an agreement with the boy and his grandmother he stipulated that the boy must follow his rules, attend school and adhere to his standards of behaviour.

• The clip is told from Sergeant Gordon’s point of view and reveals the degree of trust shown in him by members of the Indigenous community at Halls Creek. Gordon relates how after the boy had spent some time living at Gordon’s house, the boy and his grandmother came and asked Gordon to ‘bring him [the boy] up the rest of the way’. This suggests that Gordon has built positive relationships with members of the community over time.

• The clip reveals a particular social arrangement between a non-Indigenous person and an Indigenous family. While parenting in Indigenous communities is a distinctive and valued role, responsibility for raising children is generally communal. This social context provides a framework for formalising care by non-parents, as with Sergeant Gordon in this case.

• Halls Creek, shown in this clip from the documentary Kimberley Cops, is a remote town in the Kimberley region of WA covering Jaru and Kija country. The documentary focuses on the work of the police in the Kimberley region, which has a large Indigenous population.