00:00Singing a film icon onto the stage, Jack Thompson opens up on the year that changed his life.
00:11It was a wonderful adventure and it was an adventure that lasted me my life in terms of influence.
00:20The star of breakthrough Australian cinema hits, now 83 years old,
00:25Thompson travelled to Darwin to deliver the annual Vincent Hlingiari lecture
00:29on his time as a territory stockman on the vast Elchidra station when he was just 14
00:35and the characters he met along the way.
00:37Johnny Driver told me very early, Jack, there's no work here for boys.
00:46And I discovered how right that was.
00:49A fierce advocate for First Nations people and an adopted member of Arnhem Land's Goumach clan,
00:54it was during his time mustering cattle that he made lasting connections with Indigenous Australia.
01:00I was the only white person on the stock camp and they looked after me like I was their son.
01:07They recognised that I had no idea of anything to do with cattle
01:13and very little idea of what to do with horses.
01:16Thompson's time on the land came ten years before the Wave Hill walk-off,
01:20a pivotal moment in Australia's land rights history
01:23where Guringi stockmen stopped work to protest their meagre wages.
01:27I think it's such a privilege to me to have been so early associated in that way.
01:36Descendants of the Guringi stockmen watched on
01:39as Thompson spoke about the ongoing fight for equal rights for First Nations Australians.
01:45I feel that we have to presume that there will be and work toward it
01:51because anything else is unthinkable to me.
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