Queensland Theatre CompanyWritten by Tom Wright
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Designed by Stephen Curtis
Cast: George Bostock, Luke Carroll, Shaka Cook, Trevor Jamieson, Kirk Page, Guy Simon, Colin Smith, Eliah Watego and Tibian Wyles
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until 7 March
Late in Tom Wright’s Black Diggers, a returned WWI serviceman begins bleeding under the arm, and a piece of shrapnel, buried in his body for decades – a “bit of left-over war” – comes to the surface.
It’s an apt metaphor for the work done by this magnificent piece of storytelling.
Something like 800 indigenous Australian men sidestepped regulations that barred them – as non-European non-citizens – from enlisting in the 1st AIF. They fought at Gallipoli, in Palestine and on the Western Front, and gained respect and comradeship in the trenches, where mud and blood covers all colours of skin, and killing and dying come alike to all races.
For many, though, their homecoming was appalling, their service largely ignored by a country unprepared to afford them the dignity and opportunities of being an Australian, let alone one of its returning heroes.
