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NAIDOC Week: Remembering Uncle Jack Charles

By Cowboy King

Posted on July 8, 2024

(DALE VLNCH)

To celebrate #NAIDOC Week 2024 we’re posting articles from our First Nations issues.

Warning: this piece contains the name and image of an Aboriginal person who is deceased. The family of Jack Charles has given kind permission for the reproduction of this image.

Stolen at birth by the state, imprisoned, sexually abused, addicted, recovered, vindicated, and an unapologetic thief, Jack Charles’ journey to becoming an unlikely national treasure broke every rule with delicious flair. As one of very few elder Aboriginal gay men, his death last year was uniquely sad. Journalist Gary Nunn reflects on the man he met.

DNA #285 | Photography: Dale Vlnch Feature: Gary Nunn

There are many labels that fit the late Uncle Jack Charles, but two beautifully surmising words focus on different parts of his identity. At a sneeze over 1.5 metres tall (about 5-foot), Jack was, until his death in October last year, just before he turned 80, a pocket rocket. Short in stature but huge in energy, personality and generosity of spirit. “I’m pretty small,” he told me in 2019, “but I’ve got a loud mouth!”

This pocket rocket was a true trailblazer. Before Nana Miss Koori had debuted in drag,

Before Steven Oliver had asked, “What’s this then, slut?” in Black Comedy, Uncle Jack Charles was that very rare thing: a gay Aboriginal man in showbiz. Later in life, of course, he was that even rarer thing: an out gay Aboriginal man in showbiz with white/grey hair. It sat on his head and below his chin like two beautiful clouds, one fluffy, the other stormy.

He has inspired up-and-coming generations of Indigenous gay men.

“I’ve always been inspired by Uncle Jack Charles’ journey,” TV presenter Matty Mills tells DNA. “He was somebody who reinvented himself and he was proud to share his past in the hope to inspire others. That takes an incredible amount of courage.

“Uncle Jack Charles was one of the few First Nations gay men that I could look up to in the media. His legacy will be one of inspiration and triumph and I hope he knows how much he meant to our community,” says Matty.

“I’d Rob To Collect Rent For Stolen Aboriginal Land”

I spoke to the actor and raconteur at length for a major BBC feature I wrote on the release of his autobiography, Born-Again Blakfella in 2019, two years before he died. He told me, in that distinctive, sonorous voice, and with his mischievous demeanour, that he’d burgle Melbourne mansions as rent collection for stolen Aboriginal land, specifically on his mother’s land.

It was this defiance of the law that often landed him in prison: he spent his 20th, 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays behind bars. He was convicted almost 50 times for various offences relating to drugs and theft. He later presented 2 of his mug shots in a TED Talk as if they were art; proof, he said, of his survival. Prison, homelessness (he’d “crawl into a ball and sleep in the girls’ public toilets”), burglaries and heroin addiction informed his life, his art and his storytelling.

Becoming An Elder Statesman

He transformed, in his later years, kicking heroin in 2005, aged 60. When we spoke, he hadn’t been in prison for ten years. He was squarely focused, then, on becoming a “ridgy-didge, beyond reproach elder statesman”, visiting prisons to act as, “a beacon, aleading black light”, for impressionable young inmates.

“I was the serial pest nuisance of Melbourne,” he told me. “Now I’m an old reprobate, easily forgiven.”

His funeral in October 2022 – interrupted at one stage by drag queens making their way onstage to perform Everybody’s Free – was live-streamed into prisons, remand centres and youth justice centres across Victoria in recognition of his work within the state’s justice system.

His former manager, Patrice Capogreco, who had set up the BBC interview for me, gave a tearful speech, in which she asked for Uncle Jack’s book, documentary and a recording of his one-man play to be part of the school curriculum and made available for people in prison.

“These resources hold the lessons and teachings of a man who, against all the odds, turned his life around and will give others hope and inspiration to do the same,” she said

Rebel Heart And Art

Rebelliousness became part of his art. Better than most, he knew that Australian law wasn’t always the most faithful guide to morality or justice and, sometimes, represented the very opposite of those principles.

During his lifetime, being gay itself was a crime. Being Aboriginal itself was likely to land him in prison for the most unfair of “transgressions”. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are 12.5 times more likely to be in prison than non-Indigenous Australians.

This first happened to him at just 17, simply for leaving his foster home and trying to find his real mother as he became curious about his Aboriginality. As a member of the Stolen Generation – Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents as part of a now-infamous government policy to try to “assimilate” Aboriginal children into white families – Jack was taken from his mother at just four months old. He first discovered he was Aboriginal when others bullied him for it while he was in care.

As a ward of the state at 17, leaving without permission to track down his Aboriginal family was a crime. It broke his forced assimilation order.

“My foster mum always insisted I was an orphan,” he told me. “When I returned from finding my real family, she called the police on me. No sooner had I put my pyjamas on, I was put in the police wagon.”

Before this, something, “far worse than anything I ever experienced in prison”, happened to Jack. Between the ages of two and 14 he was in a Salvation Army home for boys where he suffered abuse. He blocked out the physical and sexual abuse, not even discussing it with long-term partner Jack Huston, who he was with for five years, until, during a prison stay, other inmates recognised him from the boys’ home and asked him to join a class action against the institution.

“It was my bed he came to first when he came out of his room into the dormitory,”

Jack told me of his primary abuser. “I had to put up with a lot of poking and stuff from this fella,” he says. “In addition to the sexual escapades, there were punishments I’d blocked out, too.

The class action was successful. In addition to financial compensation, Charles received a letter of apology from The Salvation Army. “It gave me a certain level of closure,” he told me.

He described Australia to me as, “a bastard of a country for blackfellas; uniquely and peculiarly racist against its First Nations people”.

Addict. Homosexual. Cat Burglar. Actor. Aboriginal.

When we first spoke, I asked whether it was appropriate to address Jack as “Uncle”. He shot back through throaty laughter: “It’s better than Aunty Jack!” a reference to a comedy drag character from 1970’s Australian television.

He explained that, “Uncle” is a form of respect, bestowed upon anyone with seniority or grey hair within the Aboriginal community, in which elderly people are revered: “I like it. Even prison wardens showed me the respect of calling me Uncle,” he said.

It’s one of the many other labels attached to the ground-breaking “grandfather of Aboriginal theatre” – he co-founded Nindethana, an Indigenous theatre company in 1972.

Some of those labels he owned, co-oped, reclaimed and made part of his own art. Six stark words epitomised him on the tagline of a 2009 documentary about his life: Addict. Homosexual. Cat burglar. Actor. Aboriginal.

He was, specifically, a Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wowurrung and Yorta Yorta man.

He was also a storyteller, voice artist, musician and activist. In defiance of Australia’s greatest evils and harshest laws, his is an irresistible story of survival: he was the baby stolen from his parents by the state, imprisoned, addicted and sexually abused. He was the thieving heroin addict who, against every odd, became the toast of the arts world, winning the Red Ochre Award, which recognises lifetime achievement of Indigenous artists, in 2019.

“Gay And Arty And Everyone Knows It!”

While he saw Australia as a “bastard of a country” for blackfellas where, even into his elder years, he’d be refused cabs or asked to pay fares up front, he was pleasantly surprised when the nation voted yes to same-sex “I was tickled pink. I never thought we’d see the day,” he told me. “I’d thought Australia was too much of a bastard country to get it through. Being gay and arty, this is important to me.” When he discussed being gay, the term he always used was “gay and arty” – one of the many delicious peculiarities that defined the

“When I was younger, I assumed everybody knew I was gay and arty,” he said. Later in our chat, he said: “I’m not a screaming queen but I’m a gay and arty old bloke and everybody knows it, I believe.”

He sometimes expressed a borderline forlorn desire to have come out sooner, but soon caught it before it formed into regret: “The mere fact that I was one of the first blackfellas in theatre, I thought that was gay enough.”

In July 2021 he told The Saturday Paper: “In those days (1950s and ’60s), you had to keep it dark because it was illegal. I remember the days when the police were going around to the tearooms or the public toilets, as cadets to be blooded up, blood up and bash the poofs.” He added, with characteristic candour and humour: “Thankfully, they did it at night and I’m dark, so they never saw me! Don’t show the whites of your eyes and don’t smile!”

One of his most cherished duties was giving the Welcome To Country at Melbourne’s LGBTQIA+ event, Midsumma.

It all formed part of what he saw as his greatest role yet in an eventful life: “To be an elder you have to be statesmanlike. Own your past indiscretions. Share your wealth. I’ve done all that, which is why Victorians took me into their hearts and voted me Senior Australian

In prison, on behalf of fellow inmates, he wrote love letters to their wives in exchange “You’re gay, aren’t ya?” they’d say to him. “Give us a kiss and I’ll let ya know,” would be his courageous-bordering-on-audacious response. It won him respect.

“My Sexy Voice And Big, Beautiful Afro Got Me Through”

His stage and screen career as an actor seemed to come as a surprise, even to him. He admitted to me that he, “sneaked through without going to NIDA [The National Institute Of Dramatic Art.”

He appeared in dozens of Australian television series, including Cleverman, Women Of The Sun, Preppers, Mystery Road, Black Comedy and Rosehaven, and movies including The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, Blackfellas and Wolf Creek. Some of the success he put down to his street cred and his gorgeous awareness of his own sex appeal: “My addiction and my sexy voice got me through,” he told me. “My big, beautiful afro got me through. I looked a sight.”

By the time I spoke to him, when he was 75, he’d travelled far from the days when he’d kip on the couch of his dealers (“I liked to be close to the source.”)

By then, he’d refuse to do auditions – directors had to take him for coffee if they desired him for a role. And he’d only participate in arts festivals on the strict condition that he was flown business class, never economy. He was characteristically roguish about, it too: “Al true! I know I sound up myself but it’s nice to be able to say that as a Blackfella. I reckon I haven’t done too badly for an old crim!”

The Unlikely Man Who Fulfilled His Later Life’s Mission

He was on a mission, when we spoke, to lobby Victoria’s state government and courts to expunge his criminal record, a case of life imitating art, as this was the storyline of his acclaimed play Jack Charles v The Crown.

In prison, he saw many of the Stolen Generations, “stuck on the daily grind of addiction”.

“I’ve been an actor since I was 19, but I lost a lot of work because of white powders and jail time,” he said. “I dearly would’ve loved an Aboriginal elder like me to come and tweak my conscience. There’s a serious lack of elders in the prison system and I want to change that.” The criminal record prohibited him from widely visiting prisons and schools outside the discretion of wardens and principals, and from visiting certain other countries.

“I’m beyond reproach,” he told me confidently. “I’ve had the breaks in my life, now I want to make sure other young Indigenous kids get theirs.”

It was something he deeply desired and something, I’m thrilled to report, he was, at least partially, triumphant in achieving.

This final, noble quest was granted by one unlikely source: President Donald Trump. With multiple criminal convictions including drug crime, Jack would’ve ordinarily be prohibited from entering the United States, but the Trump administration granted him a visa waiver to go to New York to perform Jack Charles v The Crown.

A year before he died, Uncle Jack explained what this meant to him. “That’s the ultimate for an old thief like me,” he said. “I’m still thieving, stealing things. I’m stealing hearts and minds nowadays.