Long Yarn Short by Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts

Author:Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2024-08-19T02:51:46+00:00

I grew up in a community where failure seemed to be the expected outcome for many of us. As I mentioned before, we grew up with a jail next door, a local community centre that provided my Vegemite and cheese sandwiches and the free milk and milo that I loved, and sadly, just down the road, a cemetery.

I loved my local community centre. Julie who ran it continued to show up for so many. She often had a foul mouth, but if you needed something she had your back. I would go there after school for a sandwich and a milo, and she would always make extra for me. This place meant so much to so many. Today it has sadly changed hands and the way it works. I wish my community still had a place to go to, but if I am honest even with these places, we are still harmed.

Funerals were more common than celebrations. This was the reality of living in a community plagued by constant surveillance and policing designed to isolate us. Systemic violence was a daily occurrence, with police abusing their power against children and community members. The case workers would come all well dressed, appearing to be ‘better’ than all of us, in preparation to steal children, and while I witnessed these events, nothing could prepare me for the night they would come and steal me.

In my childhood, I saw more police officers than schoolteachers. They were a constant presence, policing our communities and instilling fear within us. This was the norm, and we always had to act with caution. As children, we stuck together, keeping watch for each other, ensuring someone always had their eyes and ears on the police. We didn’t have phones to document their abuses back then, but today, even when we witness instances of police violence, accountability seems to elude us, and the value placed on our lives is minimal.

My father remained in our family housing commission flat until his last breath. At just twenty years old, I found myself breaking into our old flat, the one we lived in before I was taken. I shattered a window to gain entry, only to find my father laying on the floor. It was a moment of sheer agony, one that will forever be etched in my memory.

I often have flashbacks to that moment when I climbed in because my older brother Joseph was too scared to. I smashed the window, landed on the kitchen sink and jumped down. I walked just around the corner, and there was Dad – my whole world changed once again. My best friend, gone. When I reflect on that place, all I see is pain. I feel the weight of that pain, the hurt, the anger. I am angry that I was taken from those walls at the age of ten-and-a-half, and then, at twenty, my father was taken from me. It happened on the October long weekend, the same weekend as our Koori Knockout.

The

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