A testimony of injustice

Robert Bismark died Fantome Island today 23rd. Please inform relatives funeral today.

Unless his relatives and friends had access to a Lear jet to fly from Woorabinda to Palm Island, Bobby Bismark would not have had a single one attend his funeral (Bobby previously worked in the cattle industry in and around Woorabinda). Dad told me that he was not aware of anyone from Cunnamulla travelling to Palm Island for the funeral or being notified of his death.

Bobby Bismark never did get to visit his people in Cunnamulla since leaving under duress in 1953 for treatment on Fantome Island.

The many friends and family members of Bobby Bismark living on the Cunnamulla Yumba weren’t afforded the right to provide for a man who had fought and overcome the dreaded disease of leprosy but could not defeat the evils of bigotry of the government of the day.

I’m sure there are many other Bobby Bismark stories out there, of that time, which would’ve followed a similar racist conclusion.

On my recent birthday I travelled to the Mulrunji protest gathering in Brisbane’s Queen’s Park. And during the successful march to Parliament House down George Street I thought of the family of Mulrunji Doomadgee and the trauma the government had put them through in their handling of his case and in a moment of reflection, mid march, I also cried out words of protest for Bobby Bismark who suffered injustice at the hands of a bigoted government of another era.

Which brings us back to the celebrated words of the brilliant African American writer James Baldwin: “If one really wants to see how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policeman, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most - and listens to their testimony.”