North Queensland community pays tribute to Indigenous elder with legacy of 'healing'
Bindal elder Uncle Alfred Smallwood Senior died from cancer on Sunday with his family by his side.
For decades, Mr Smallwood Senior, known affectionately as "Bimbo", devoted his life to running a men's group that became a sanctuary for men across generations.
"He was a legend of his time. Doing so much healing for men, both black and white," said his sister Gracelyn Smallwood.
Starting in 2005 as a small weekly gathering, Uncle Alfred's Men's Group grew into a lifeline for those seeking camaraderie, purpose and a safe space to share stories and struggles.
Under his guidance and lived experience, the group offered practical support for men recently released from the corrections system and those who battled addiction with the aim of restoring dignity, respect and belonging.
In 2015, Uncle Alfred presented his work on the international stage at the World Indigenous Education Conference in Hawaii.
Four years later, he was named Male Senior of the Year in his hometown of Townsville for his volunteer work offering men a second chance with their families, employment and themselves.
"He was a chip off our beautiful dad's block, Archie Smallwood; kind, humble, transparent and marched for all to have quality human rights," Dr Smallwood said.
"He has left a big legacy for Townsville and the world."
Uncle Alfred worked closely with the Townsville Justice Group, volunteering as a Murri Court Elder, director and later a family support officer, where he remained steadfast in supporting local families navigating the justice system.
The men's group became a reference point to Townsville magistrates and lawyers for people who had entered the justice system.
North Queensland Law Association committee member and criminal lawyer Lorelei Billing said Uncle Alfred's Men's Group became a reference point for Townsville magistrates and lawyers.
"The impact on Indigenous and non-Indigenous men has been profound, helping to break cycles, return to their families and communities as stronger contributing members of society."
Uncle Alfred's eldest sister, Aunty Dorothy Savage, believed his formative years helped shape him into someone who could give firsthand mentorship to those struggling.
"He had a rough life growing up, but his lived experience was what made his men's group so successful. People could trust him," said Ms Savage.
Uncle Alfred was a familiar figure at community events, school gatherings and local ceremonies, generous with his time and stories.
"Our hearts are broken, and our family and close friends are shattered, but his good work will continue, and our darling will never be forgotten," said Dr Smallwood.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Developer builds smaller dwellings as Albany housing shortage grows
The population of one of Australia's fastest-growing regional cities is rising as sea changers flock to the region. But away from a coastline framed by million-dollar homes, a crisis is growing. Catherine Sawtell said four weeks ago she was staying in a house with rats under the floorboards and a possum in the roof. The university-educated 64-year-old once owned her own home in Albany, 420 kilometres south of Perth, but became homeless in about 2019 when her marriage broke down. She bounced from refuge to shelter, sleeping on couches and in share homes, eventually moving to Queensland in 2021 to stay with a friend. Ms Sawtell returned a year later to Albany, but affording a home in the coastal city on a disability pension proved impossible. "I have an excellent rental record … I'm not on any blacklists or anything like that, but I couldn't get anything." After five years homeless, a social housing provider helped Ms Sawtell secure accommodation that allowed her to start rebuilding her life. "And I bought a little second-hand car, so I'm mobile now." Her two-bedroom home is one of 12 units designed by affordable housing provider Advance Housing with people like Ms Sawtell in mind. Chief executive John Lysaught said demand for social housing had risen by 30 per cent in the past 18 months, but much of the available stock was unfit for purpose. He said fewer than 6 per cent of development approvals in the past five years were for one and two-bedroom homes, but almost 90 per cent of people on the social housing waiting list were seeking smaller dwellings. "For pure social housing, there's over 750 eligible tenancies on the waitlist for the Great Southern, and over 570 of those are in Albany," Mr Lysaught said. Albany has become the fastest-growing regional centre in Western Australia and the fourth-fastest nationally, according to a recent report by the Regional Australia Institute. It found the region, with a population of about 50,000, experienced a 200 per cent rise in internal migration in the 12 months to December. Support services fear the increasing population will worsen the housing crisis. "It seems to be getting worse if anything," Southern Aboriginal Corporation deputy chief executive Oscar Colbung said. "Demand has increased so much that there's virtually nothing available more broadly." WA Housing Minister John Carey said the government was working with community housing providers to deliver more social and affordable housing across the state, targeted towards seniors and those with disabilities. Mr Lysaught's plans for Albany included 36 and 51-unit developments, but getting ahead of the shortage was an ongoing struggle. "There's lots being done about it, both by government and by community providers, but it's going to take some time to try and catch up."
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Coloured wool from Polwarth sheep popular with crafters around the world
In 1971, Wendy Dennis had an epiphany while under the shower. "I thought, 'Why don't I breed coloured sheep?' Because it's already got a colour, you don't have to dye it, no chemicals. Breed them." Wendy was newly married to a farmer in south-west Victoria and the global resurgence in home crafts such as spinning and knitting natural fibres was just beginning. Up until that time, most "coloured sheep", namely anything with not entirely white wool, usually ended up on the dinner table. "So I rescued a few coloured sheep out of the 'killer' paddock, [where they were] ready for Sunday lunch," Wendy, now 83, recalled. Wendy's husband Dave remembered the moment. "People are starting to spin coloured wool," Wendy told him. "'I'm going to have those killers. You can't kill them,'" Dave Dennis recalled her saying. And so a unique flock was born where the recessive dark wool gene replaced the dominant white wool one. "There are so many different colours. There are all the blacks and greys then there's the browns and fawns," Wendy said. In the half century since the flock began the Dennis family's wool has been sent to craft enthusiasts around the world to be fashioned into all manner of things. The wool is keenly sought after because the sheep are the Polwarth breed which produces a unique fleece. "Australia's first breed of sheep and it all started with the Dennises in 1880," Wendy said. In that year Richard Dennis launched the breed, named after the local electorate. It was the result of the cold, damp climate causing fleece rot in the dense wool of their merino flock. "That bit about water collecting in the fleece and not being able to expel was problematic and so that's the problem they sought to fix by crossing it with the Lincoln," Wendy's son Tom said. "So it's three-quarter merino, one quarter Lincoln, bred to a fixed type called a Polwarth, originally [named] a Dennis Comeback, later called a Polwarth," Wendy added. The Lincoln's long greasy wool gave the Polwarth the ability to cope with wetter, colder climates. By the early 1900s the breed was rapidly spreading throughout southern Australia and being exported to high rainfall countries, especially in South America, even to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. Polwarths peaked in Australia at about 8 million in the 1960s. By then they accounted for more than half the sheep in Tasmania. At the recent Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo, Tasmanian producer Wayne Walker shipped his prized Polwarths across Bass Strait and took out the major prizes in their class. But the number of entries was well down. "It's a a bit tough for a lot of people to get here and the costs are getting dearer and nothing is getting easier," Wayne said. In recent decades Polwarth numbers have rapidly declined because of advances in the merino breed. But breeders such as Greg Potter and his daughter Samantha believe the breed's distinctive wool has a unique and important role in the natural fibres' market. "People love the single source Polwarth," Samantha Potter said. "Being a longer, straighter, more aligned fibre it makes the wool easier to peel out and spin," Greg added. Their wool is sold directly to the wool craft market, including to the Dennis family, and processed and spun locally into yarn. Isabel Renters, who with her husband Nick operates a carding and spinning mill near Ballarat, says there is growing consumer demand for natural, sustainable fibre products. "All looking for natural products where they know it's sustainable, it's ethical, traceable," Isabel said. Natural coloured wool, free from chemical dye is also gaining favour, especially among wool crafters. "It's just a dream come true because it's got a good crimp, which makes it a little more elastic and it's got a demi-lustre from the Lincoln which makes it shine a tiny bit and it's so soft from the merinos," Wendy Dennis said. Tom Dennis is the fifth generation of his family to grow Polwarths and continue a sheep bloodline that stretches back to the family's merinos, shipped from Tasmania to Victoria in 1840. Drawing on the family's large archives, Tom is setting up a mini museum on the property to better tell the Polwarth story. It will showcase the passion, foresight and innovation that created the breed in 1880. But more importantly, it will cater for the present. "We need to make sure we've got woollen yarn in front of people that appreciate, Australian-grown, Australian processed, good ethical standards," Tom said. "And those sorts of values that people want to buy into when they're purchasing yarn."
ABC News
5 hours ago
- ABC News
Cane fires return as Qld growers battle to harvest last year's poor crop
A still smoke haze hangs in the air as cane farmer Bill Holding raises his voice to address the gathered crowd. "Standover fires are probably one of the best fires you'll see — super heat, big flames, heaps of warmth," he said. "I've probably had 50 years of lighting fires, but I don't do it much anymore. It's all green cane harvesting." Once a common farm practice, pre-harvest burning is now largely a tourist attraction, but not for this group gathered in a paddock at Calen, about 50 kilometres north of Mackay. Walking in the wake of the cane fire he is lighting, Bill explains the history to the spectators, but also why this year, farmers have returned to the burn. The first cane fire in Australia was an accident. In 1897, the newly completed Mossman Mill crushed its first cane ahead of schedule, after a fire burned through Mrs Annie Rose's crop at Bonnie Doon. At the time, the crop was cut by hand, using thousands of indentured South Sea Islanders either kidnapped or misled into coming to Australia. By the 1930s, immigrants from Italy and other European nations had largely replaced those workers, and cane fires remained rare, but not unheard of. But amid a broader power struggle between the unionised migrant workers and millers and farm owners, burning cane became a battlefield. An epidemic of Weil's disease, otherwise known as leptospirosis, was being spread by rats in the cane fields of Ingham — and cane cutters were dying. A 1934 article in the Medical Journal of Australia reported 138 cases of the bacteria that can cause jaundice, kidney failure and bleeding from the lungs. Burning was recommended to eradicate the rats but the industry resisted, worried it would hurt the value of the crop at a time when prices were already crashing. Strikes broke out, and in 1936 an Industrial Court order made burning before harvest mandatory in certain conditions. By the end of World War II, cane fires had become standard practice. By Bill's time, harvesting had moved from hand-cutting to mechanical, but burning was still commonplace to remove "trash" like loose and dead leaves and weeds. But there was growing pressure from opponents concerned about the risk of escaped fires, ash falls, lowered air quality and the overall environmental impact. By the 1990s, new harvester technology allowed farmers to embrace cutting green. "It was better for the environment, better for moisture retention, better for everything," Bill said. Despite largely moving on, this season's farmers are once again reaching for the drip torch, reigniting the old technique. Grower representative group Canegrowers estimated 85 per cent of Queensland's cane was now green harvested, though cane fires are still regularly used in parts of the Burdekin and NSW. The exception is standover cane — older plantings left in the paddock that could not be harvested the year before. In districts like Mackay there is an abundance of standover cane left behind from a troubled crush, plagued by wet weather and mill breakdowns. "Last year was probably the most standover we've left in a long, long time," Mackay Canegrowers chairman Joseph Borg said. To conduct a cane burn, Joseph said typically two people would don firefighting equipment and head out at night, when it is cooler and easier to spot stray sparks. "It is a fine art," he said. "The older guys, it's amazing what they can do with a drip torch and how they can make fire draw into itself. "They know how to make fire work for you rather than against you." The dried leaf trash burns from the outside in, eventually running out of fuel because woodier green cane sticks will not burn. Farmers need a permit to burn, and Joseph said the wider community also needed to be informed about the risks. "The town has certainly expanded over the last 25 years into the rural areas … people have never seen it before." He urged inquisitive spectators to slow down if driving near a fire, and account for the smoke. One cane farm has opted to manage the crowds mesmerised by their dazzling spectacle by turning it into a ticketed event. Gathered on the banks of a picturesque dam at Oh Deere Farm Stay in Calen, hundreds of people waited for the burn. Children played on swings as parents chatted in camp chairs, near the barbecue, a full bar and a live band. As the sun went down, Bill Holding helped light up the cane paddock. Static crackling gave way to a flame that towered over the field and ripped across the horizon. Within minutes, the skyline calmed and a smoky dusk settled — the only flames now glowing campfires attended into the evening. Owner Karinda Anderson farmed in Tasmania before moving to Calen nine years ago, adding the farm stay alongside the cane production. Four years ago, she started offering farm tours, but this was the first public cane burning event she had hosted. The rise in burns this year was an exception, but grower Joseph Borg said the industry would always be adaptable. "Our industry has been around for 100 years … hopefully it'll be there for another hundred," he said.
