WICC:  Lester, can you tell us a little bit about your family background and your connection to this area?
Lester:  I was born in Katanning and I lived there for about three years. Then we came to Albany. I’m the oldest of six. Two sisters, four brothers.  We lived on an Aboriginal Reserve alongside the highway.  I was very fortunate to go from high school straight into a job down at the golf links.  I did my apprenticeship as a greens keeper.  I loved it, probably the best job I’ve ever had in my life.  I made five pounds, eight shillings a week.  Didn’t question it, I was a millionaire. Mum got three pounds and I had two pounds in those days. That was a lot of money. You could buy a hell of a lot of things. So I really felt very, very, very rich.  I didn’t realise at the time that the golf club captain, Harry,  was taking money out of my pay each week.  Years later Harry called me up to go to afternoon tea.  So I rode my bicycle down and outside the window there was this magnificent FJ Holden with white sidewall tires.  This car was glistening.  The man who drove it was Jeff, a prominent Perth businessman.  Harry and I knew him from the golf club.  Jeff owned car lots.  Jeff said, “Do you want a lift home?  Will my bike fit in the boot?” I said, “Yeah.”  He said, “Do you want to drive it?”  I said, “Yeah”. So, Jeff and Harry gave me the keys and didn’t get in the car.  They said, “It’s yours, we’ve been saving all this money up.”  I couldn’t believe it.

On sustainable land use…
We’re just taking crop after crop, whether it’s plants or whether it’s animals or mineral sands, whatever. The chase for bigger and better profits at the expense of a poorer and poorer earth. It’s not going to have a happy ending…It’s a matter of people realizing that there are other ways they can do it. We need to start resting our soils.  It’s a banking system and we’re not making deposits.  When I worked as a greens keeper at the golf club we had to put in 9 more holes for it to become an 18 hole golf course…. And we had to do that in beach sand right next to Middleton Beach. I said you can’t grow anything in there. So my two mates that  worked with me… we used to get ash from the laundry mat and starting adding it to the soil…  One of the things that worked best was Rose Clover. So we’d plant that as well.  The nodules, when you pull out the plant carefully had these incredible nitrogen nodules that enriched the sand.  Albany golf links is now one of the finest courses in the world… all grown on beach sand.  So I’ve had a very early introduction to what you can do to return goodness to the soil.

On how Noongars resolved issues
You would get 30 women in a in a room and there would be a card gambling game.  Nobody would make eye contact.  During these games they would resolve issues that were on their mind.  That was the main purpose of the games.  Maybe one person has an issue with someone’s son coming to the house too often to see the daughter, or all manner of things… but every issue would be brought up.  Everyone’s sitting down so you had a disadvantage in regards to getting up and punching someone or offending someone.  No one stopped the card game cause there was a big pile of money in the middle of the table, so they had to keep that going. It is important to always do it (raising controversial issues) when you have a task to do along with the conversation.
 
On helping your neighbour…
Our families lived really close when we lived on the reserve. We had tents alongside one another within 10, 15 yards from one another.  In the night, you might have heard a sound of someone in pain. We had no gain until we went across and helped them because the noise and the pain was all you could hear.  Everyone came over and contributed to helping that person and we were all close enough to do that.  We’re not anymore.  They’ve got a Commodore and a 67 inch flat screen TV now… and they’re (strangely) happy as well. I don’t know what the description is for people that are happy in a very sad society.  I think we’re living a false life in some cases.