Floyd speaks with Murray from The Long Journey Partnership about his work with Aboriginal communities living in remote areas.
Floyd Gomes
We all have pressure in our lives and pressure makes diamonds. And yet, in the heat of a moment, that pressure can lead to various ways that we handle a situation, either aggressively or bringing out some degree of kindness. And that’s what Diamond Kind is about.
Floyd Gomes
Well, welcome back, guys. We’re here on Diamond Kind. And we’ve got Murray Turner. And Murray is a very special guy. He’s done a lot of things. He’s from the peninsula. And so we and we thought, great to have Murray and he’s got a few things to talk about, including his involvement with First Nations people with some of his work that he’s done in the NT. So Murray, welcome.
Murray
Thanks, man. Thanks for the intro. It’s very kind words.
Floyd Gomes
I try I try.
Murray
Well, let’s, let’s get it right out there off the bat. My blood pressure is 127 over 88 mean, I’m on fire. Thanks for your thanks for your guidance on the weekend.
Floyd Gomes
Thanks for giving credit where it’s due.
Murray
Absolutely. It might look I said when he spoke recently, he said, Hey, mas come in and talk about this. What’s going on with this remote communities and that sort of stuff. So in a nutshell, let’s go back to 1972.
Murray
My front door, there was a tip on the front door, and my cousin turned up with this beautiful young lady called Agila. And he said this, my new wife and we were like, this is awesome. I’m from a small country town in New South Wales, near a place called while. So anyway, did you learn is from a very remote community called number. It’s in the southeast corner of Arnhem Land about 1000 kilometers from Arnhem Land, so from sorry, from Darwin. So she was born in the bush, she walked out of the bush with her dad and his five wives between 70 and 75 years ago, we’re not quite sure, because in those days, the missionaries grabbed the kids. And the government said, Would you like a birthday on the first of January, or the 38th of June, you just pick whichever one you like. So we’re not sure how old she is. She became a school teacher, my cousin married her when she was in her early 20s. They’ve been married for about 50 years. Certainly my cousin just passed away a few months ago. But what happened is back in the mid 80s,
Murray
my father and mum was sort of involved with just helping out the community doing bits and pieces just not getting paid. And none of that, all the stuff that we do. We’re not on anyone’s payroll. We don’t work for the government. Basically, they helped out in one of the communities up there. And then, as I got a bit older, I spoke to the elders out of nowhere and said, Hey, guys, I haven’t got bucket loads of cash. What do you need? What’s, what’s it all about? And they went, we need to educate our kids, Murray. I said, mate, I’m in a bribery and corruption as this said, How about if the kids go to school every day, you pick five of them that can that can go everywhere, as much as I can. I’ll fly him down to Melbourne to my home. We’ll have two weeks of going to footy, going to the zoo, happy to have good time, health issues. Jump on those. I was fortunate enough to own a medical practice. 25 years ago, I’m not a doctor for those. So anybody out there, you want to ring me for any consult? Don’t ring me ring someone that’s qualified. I’ll have a look. But that’s it.
Floyd Gomes
Don’t undersell, you’ve given me some good advice.
Murray
So what we did is, we bring the kids down, we’ve had over 60 Kids come down, and we enrolled them in the local primary school, which is Red Hill consolidated or Dromana Secondary College if they’re a bit older, and it is awesome. These kids have a ball. But more importantly, kids on the Peninsula get a chance to immerse themselves in culture that they’ve never ever seen before. Most of them never met a person of dark color. It’s just you know, five year olds are like, wow, that stuff doesn’t rub off. It’s amazing. It is just the comments you give us on the kids that really I’ve had to stand back and think about you know, when one kid a five year old, said, it’s good to see the natives that are in the village. And you sort of think what is going on at home there? How does a five year old learn that and as a beautiful friend Nelson Mandela said, You are not born racist. Yeah, I have to be taught that. So with these kids within hours, their best friends. It happens to me every day, I’ll um I’ll have them all checked in the back of a trooper and we’re heading back to our house and also how’s your day school kids and they go go and I say to make the new friends today? Yeah, my new friend Billy. My new friend Sharon, I’m in tears, by the time we at the bottom of the hill. These kids just connect. They don’t see the color. They just see friends. So this program has been really good. We’ve had a good time. We got a 97% attendance rate in the school before COVID. COVID it’s come down now obviously because there was a bit of a scare. It’s starting to come back up again. But to give you an idea when we first started this program, I had nine principals in the first year at the school. So retiring upset a lot quicker gonna do this program on they’ve gone can you explain it to me? So I’ve got the time I’ve got the last one. I said no, I’m not gonna explain it. We’re coming up. And what it is I brought year 11 Kids and Dromana secondary. They teach level one first aid’s and John’s and then they’re taught bush medicine and bush tucker. So it’s kids teaching kids and it works really really well. So the second thing we did is we went into the cooking room and my wife lists a little socks Carol her darling, if you’re listening, I didn’t know but I think we’ve got shares in Aldi because she just went into Aldi’s every week and bought fry pans and cookers and toasters and oh my god. But what we’ve managed to do is refurbish the cooking school. So now we can bring young mums and young kids into the cooking school, and we teach a 10 year old how to cook for 10 people. And it works works really well. Second thing we did is we think right op shop. So we set up an op shop, all our friends just send stuff up to the committee, you can post things to this remote community.
Murray
Maybe we can get some of those details.
Murray
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s a great way to do it. So to give an example, to buy a fry pan in a remote community, it’s about 90 bucks, you and I pay 10 bucks at Woolworths or Bunnings or whatever, an industrial bucket that you want to put your mop in and put your foot on the side and clean it there. 38 bucks and Bunnings they cost 130 In a remote community. One of the CEOs of the local Shire Council up there, called me the other guy’s Murray I was out in the community and I forgot my pillow and some sheets, I went and bought him at the local store costs him $130 He was he was jumping up and down on it. Well, Brother, you’re on good money, you will jump up and down. 30% of people in remote communities do not collect any form of social welfare. It’s just too hard to do. In number one, for example, we’ve got 50 houses and 800 people. So there’s no room for a cupboard. There’s no room for a set of drawers, there’s just room to put mattresses. And the issue with that is you have overcrowding and as you and I both will know, rheumatic heart disease is a massive issue in remote community. So what you’ve got is, kids are done eating properly. You’ve got diminished and compromised immune systems. And as you know, when you’ve got bedbugs, and a bedbug or just defecate on your skin, it’s a perfect host site for that strep infection. The mums and dads are not taught that when you’ve got that big, green, runny nose and you’re not well, you need to go to a doc, you need to get some antibiotics into you. And what happens is that files and the kids end up getting acute rheumatic fever and then from that rheumatic heart disease. And for people who are listening out there, this is a disease that really, unfortunately, First Nations people are 122 times more likely to get it than any other culture in the world. Menzies School of Health are doing some mazing workup in the communities. But it is a disease of poverty. And it’s totally avoidable. Totally avoidable. Sad news is it cost $500,000 A year for every child that gets it. But the worst news is that when child does get you need a by silan injection every 21 days. Now by saline injection is a special type of injection that really hurts when you put it in. It’s like a VFL, AFL footballer, footballer has given you a knee in the arm of the bum. So these kids at 6, 7, 8,9, 10, 12 years old, whatever, and their little arm hurts for three days. So they’re not keen to come back and get that injection. Now if you don’t get that injection, don’t forget, you’re going to have that injection of 21 days for 10 years. If you don’t get that injection, you’re gonna die. So it’s really serious stuff that we’re trying to solve out there. And I’m at pains to try and explain with this referendum. For me, it’s about the kids. There’s no no other reason for me to vote yes, for these kids. Every kid no matter their color, race, culture, whatever. They need a level playing field and they need justice. And like me, I don’t think they’re just getting justice. You know? Look, I’m obviously I’m totally biased because I’m embedded in it. But I see these kids really struggling. And when you see them come to your home and they open your fridge and they go, where’s all the food come from? All right, that’s for you guys. What every day. Yeah, breakfast, lunch, dinner, breaks your heart. I think this is not the way it should be. You know, we just had one of the kids come and stay with us. Separate to her program. She was 24 she arrived at her house. She was 48 kilos. She was so low in iron, she almost had a murmur. So we had to give an iron transfusion. Luckily, I’ve got a couple of mates still in the hospital system. And we got her in straightaway. We took nine fillings and we took 14. And she’s good family. So there’s a huge gap when we talk about the gap. That’s what it’s all about. We need to really think, Okay, why are these people living like this? And how come it’s been like a for such a long time. And the current system just doesn’t work all the time. There’s some really good programs working out there that governments have put in being fantastic. But there’s a lot that hasn’t. So in a nutshell, it’s just so important that we sit back and listen. I mean for me as a as a middle class white man and that’s one thing that I’ve learned. When I go to remote community I learned to shut up. People really finding that very difficult to…
Floyd Gomes
really Murray. I’ll have to come up and monitor that.
Murray
but it’s so good to sit and they’ll talk about things particularly when they do ceremony. I’ve been privileged to go to ceremony and not dance about culture, they’ll dance about community, they’ll dance about health, and the knowledge in these dances and the songs are just amazing. And to this day I, I am in awe of how they do things. The way they discuss meetings is beautiful. They will have a meeting, right? And let’s say always the other two blocks, and I can’t make it. I will have the meeting tomorrow, that we can all be here. Now in white fella culture, if you’re not there at 901, when you start the meeting, we’re gonna get gone to bed. And unfortunately, democracy 51% It’s a winner. Not working out too. Well, they’ll democracy for us at the moment, I think we’re all sort of a bit is there things we can change? So the consultation process from remote community elders, for me is, is inspiring. And it’s great to just see results, we have a new system in the territory called local decision making, and starting to work really well sit with the elders, and say, Hey, what would you like? What do you think would benefit your community? And there’s good stuff happening from that?
Floyd Gomes
To give them that self determination? Really?
Murray
Yeah. And yeah,
Floyd Gomes
and you know, Mary, just coming back one notch, you’re talking to me before this about also it’s something maybe people out there know, but it really was interesting. And for me to understand what the concept of a totem as it was, tell us a story. I thought it was a good story. So I was thinking, well, maybe I shouldn’t have a totem, too. But
Murray
totems. So for those who don’t know what a totem is, in many communities, a totem is something that is given to you, by family. And it is something that you have to look after and or protect. For example, my Doula who’s my family, her totem is Barramundi. And sadly, that means you can eat Barramundi. And it’s such a beautiful fish. Not sure if I want that. Yeah, exactly. You got to make sure we just taught me that.
Floyd Gomes
Give me the European Cup. Total Available.
Murray
So I’ve got one of the boys in one of the groups came down. He was 11 – 12 years of age, and he’s in grade six. And he comes back from the first day at school and he goes, Murray, what’s our brother? He goes, That’s why kids don’t have totems. So no, we don’t have two items. Because I had no look after country and family and community. I said, well, at the moment that white fellows aren’t doing a very good job. 50% of our families are separated as a lot of our country sad. It’s it’s, it’s got big problems to try and fix it. Communities are having some troubles. Because can I give them totems? Absolutely. So he went to school the next day, this kid from a remote community, living in poverty, was worried that our mob weren’t doing the right thing or didn’t know how to do the right thing. I think it was more to the point that if I can just help them a little bit, that’ll that’ll be really good. So he gave 30 Kids totems last came back that day, and I said, educate brother because good he said but run out of totems. So what do you mean, you run it? What do you do? And I’m just, suddenly I’ll be like, Okay, you have my attention. And he’s gone. I had to make one up. I just wanted to do. And so at the moment, I’m hoping this is not the case. But there is a 12 year old child on the peninsula, who is terrified to walk on grass, because he’s given him the totem of grace. So if he’s a footy player, he’s not going to be a good footy player. We dancing all over it. But again, this is what these kids see. They just they see a future a lot differently to how we say, but they see a future together. That was a level of meaning. The next year I was up in community and the three boys that were put that we brought down, were back up there and they’d caught a stingray and they were cooking this thing around open, find the Go marry, come and have some come and share it. I said no boys, I’m fat. I’m fat white men. I don’t need to talk. I’m good. You know, you guys. Well done boys. You could call it a Stingray, you eat it. No No. You come and share with us. Now these kids are hungry, and they still want to share it with me. And that breaks my heart. And we know that all they want to do is connect, you know, and they don’t care. They didn’t care. My social status, my political affiliations, whatever. They’re just Murrya’s family. Yeah, yeah. And that’s thick. That is, that is what to me, life is all about, you know, so I’m very humbled. Excellent. The students that we take up, it changes their world those year 11 students. I’ve got to debrief them every day. They’re in tears. The teachers are worse than Tiger. Because they’re like, why is it so bad? Why do they live like this? What’s going on? And I explained well, okay, we’ve got five days here. Can we fix all these problems in five days? No. Okay, what can we do when we’re here? We can deliver the course we can get now we’ve got over 100 kids with St. John’s first aid, but we can make partnerships. And that’s when we start the program is called the long journey partnership. We’re not tax deductible. We just do what we do. It’s just my wife and myself. Um, the other day, for example, a winner to name brandy. Yeah, it goes like it. There’s a company called ego pharmaceuticals. Beautiful group of people and Alan and Jane Oppenheim own zego. And they live next door to us importantly, on their little holiday house. Actually a little story before we get to this about the holiday house the kids would next with with me at pointless one day and they said that hasNext almost nobody leaves the house. And now that’s a holiday house, like what’s a holiday house? So that’s a house where people only come and stay there maybe two or three weeks a year, and then it’s empty. They said, We’re gonna get family and live there. That’s good. But Alan and Jane were fantastic. Alan puts his head over the fence one day, guess what’s with all these kids? Let me explain what we’re doing you guys. What about the next group? I said, Look, I’m going to struggle on the next group. Because we’ve been flying much I try and use my frequent flyer points. And the airlines have been really helpful with that sort of stuff. And he goes, like, I got 700 staff, and they all fly on my card, I have lots of points. And it’s beautiful, man. It’s just gone. How many points do you need? Well, that was great. But technically, you have to be family to trans transfer points across. So uncle Al. Thanks, might you one of them up. Now we’ve just formally given him the nod. He’s an uncle now. And Auntie Jane. Just beautiful. So they did a fundraiser the other day for us. And I wanted to buy these commercial buckets for each house. Because I was saying, if you can clean your floors, that will reduce the incidence of infection. Anyone knows to keep your house clean, healthy house healthy life. It’s what it’s all about. But they’re so expensive. 130 bucks in the community. So I said to these guys, look, I’m going to try and raise about $5,000. So we get buckets and mops. And they said, Look, we’ll do a fundraiser at work. They raised 13 and a half thousand dollars. So I went into their offices with the secretary Carol Gordon, beautiful lady. And we had a bowl night online. We bought buckets, and fill see one of the E companies had online free delivery. Right? We pressed that button 50 times to get free delivery to remote communities and warehouse manager. I’m sorry, buddy. But thanks. We got all the buckets now. Yeah. So we also bought microwaves, toasters, sandwich makers, slow cookers, rice cookers, fry pans, fishing equipment, and we gave it to the school. And we said, If kids come to school every day, they go home with a sandwich maker. They go home with a toaster. So we’ve got to give him that little bit of incentive to get here for
Floyd Gomes
my kids seem to like the air fryer
Murray
Well, we thought about it. But electricity is pretty expensive, because they use 20,000 litres of diesel a month to run the electricity generators. So we’re trying to push some solar and some wind to those sorts of things. But bushtucker is really popular turtle dugong, and plenty of fishing. So we set up the Fishing Club, which was fantastic. We another little little mate of mine who works for Richmond casters. Brilliant date, they just, they just been so helpful. I mean, everybody, that I think that’s the thing, we all want to make some sort of change. We just don’t know how to do it. We’re reluctant to go, let’s throw the money in the pot. You want to see where it goes. And I understand that. So I want people to donate to those organizations that do think this red dirt program. There’s stuff on rheumatic heart disease programs, they’re just brilliant. They just do really well. But the key is to have that connection. And it’ll change like the other day I had a spare toddler seat car seat. I just chucked it in the mail and send it up the community cost me 30 bucks to post it up there. Now we can put a car seat in one of the cars because we’ve lost kids because they haven’t been strapped in properly. You know? And for us, we wouldn’t think of that. So I mean, often when you and I were talking about this,
Floyd Gomes
I’m thinking of my garage here Murray all my stuff I should post
Murray
any punters out there that are listening to this. If you’ve got a spare baby seat, just get them open up pick a remote community microphone call to the local councillor and say can I post up her child seat? Obviously isn’t good deck. Don’t send anything it’s broken. But I’d love it. Yeah, the other things that little things that are gonna save a kid’s life. And all day something’s gonna sit the garage. Yeah, until one day you finally check it out on the front nature strip and you think oh, that’s a bit of a waste. That’s right. I mean, we only use it for what, six months or so. And then unless you unless you have lots of kids, I’ve decided no, that’s not for me. Yeah. Well, that’s fine. You’re good, might you good.
Floyd Gomes
I used them a few times from my garage is still a bit of a graveyard of old kids stuff isn’t as many are. Look, that’s awesome. I think that we will definitely need to get the details of your organization expert and how we can help it, after all of this and yeah, like to have that connection that conduit to help. Sometimes that’s what people need, isn’t it?
Murray
I encourage any, any parent out there that their kids are going to school and they got an indigenous program, get the parents to go to that school and say hey, can we connect with a remote community somewhere? Yeah, you know, we I’ve just networked Mornington Shire Council And Roper regional Shire Council they are now sister councils gone been ratified by both councils. And we’ll set up a partnership within those councils. So we can look at health services, police services, but we can also look at the local builder, the local plumber, and working at a program where we can share knowledge, and also the cultural stuff. There’s lots of kids on the potential that have cultural background, but don’t know how to read this online. Don’t know how to read country. And that’s what it’s all about. Yeah, I’m looking at my producer, here we go for time, boss, because we’re 20 minutes. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen.
Floyd Gomes
So interesting. I mean, obviously, to sometimes get to the heart of an issue, you can’t rush that I think it was Toy Story, isn’t it, you can’t rush out. So pay that. Mary, this show, though, and in sort of getting down to the theme of this show, is diamond kind and the background of that is to understand that at times of pressure, you know that you’ve got a fork in the road about how you handle yourself? And really, can you give us a an example of a time where you’ve been under a lot of pressure and you’ve come through with kindness?
Murray
I can think of a few actually, I think I’m a bit of a go to dude. I mean, next time to the mayor, anything goes wrong in my community, like a mosque in Utah, someone local, local, elected, dude, I’m just a bloke down the road. But
Floyd Gomes
you’re more important than that. Yeah.
Murray
Thank you, spirit gone. Look, I’ve had a few incidents in community and down here, you know, I’ve worked with kids down here, not at non Aboriginal kids that with extremely complicated mental health. And you know, you’ve got a crisis call to say, look, you know, I’ve had enough, I’m going to take my life sort of thing with the kids. And to know that you can ring triple O. And there there is a really, really good thing. And the compassion that comes across and the fact that everybody wants to jump in help. So on that level, I’d say to anyone, if someone’s struggling, or you’re in that crisis, where they champion the shoulder injury, this last week, I had a young woman say to me, Hey, I said, What do you do? Do you think you can take your life? And I think we’ve been thinking about it, she goes, Yeah, I said, Okay, she’s Oh, you don’t pull any punches? Do you said, No, I need to know. So now I just got the right home condo clinician, and heading that way, how I felt after that was really good. Because I addressed the problem. And I know that people to read and ask and anyone in a crisis, don’t try and sort of manage it on your own. You know, just before this interview, we spoke about the sort of what might come up and, again, in remote community, you’ve got kids that are really, really unwell. You know, I had one, actually, the last one was up there, she was quite compromised. And I just took it down in the clinic, and the nurse just banged her with a big dose of penicillin. And I knew we were on a pathway to make sure this child was not going to get rheumatic heart disease, you know, and it you just glow. I mean, one side of me is like, Oh, I’m angry, because this should not be happening. But bang, knowing that, when you’re in that crisis, lean on everyone around you, you know, and it’s like, when you do have your own personal crisis, that first step is the hardest. And I think the other side of it is, if you’re presented with that problem, know, that as a community, we can all work together and get on to this.
Floyd Gomes
So there seems to be many as he said, there are a few. I mean, this almost seems to be your MO Murray, that you come through pressure with kindness, which is really quite admirable. It’s,
Murray
I think, dear old dad for that. I mean, he’s, well, he was one cool to cucumber,
Floyd Gomes
not thanking your doctor, again, like blood pressure.
Murray
It’s a roadmap roll into Thank you very much.
Floyd Gomes
So look. Yeah, what can I say it’s been fabulous. You know, it’s a sign of the times right now in in Australia, things going on and to have someone involved with it from a firsthand perspective, as opposed to a newspaper. That’s, that’s something different again,
Murray
oh, my God, I would love to be someone that says it’s all rosy and it’s great. And we don’t need a voice. That would be just beautiful. But it’s not. It’s not rosy. It’s all really, really hard. And we need to change. That’s simply in a nutshell.
Floyd Gomes
That’s it and your person, which I really appreciate who’s demonstrated that action to be a part of that solution, in a very practical way. And
Murray
I’m very privileged. That’s without a doubt, I’m really lucky to be in my position, but I mean, not, not all of us have to do what I do. All you got to do is make that phone call that $10 can make a difference.
Floyd Gomes
Well, we’re gonna get all those details. So you might get a few phone calls or fingers crossed after this very sort of voicemail. So great to have you and yeah, look, you know, we were talking about this and maybe we can sort of keep the conversation going in some way shape or form.
Murray
anytime, anytime. Oh
Floyd Gomes
yeah thanks again Mary It’s been awesome cheers.
Murray
We-oh which means goodbye in lumber boy
