For a period in the 1980s Joyce and her young family lived in Lawson Street, Redfern, and then Wilson Street, Darlington.
Her husband Colin fondly remembers: “Joyce and I had much earlier links with Chippendale/Darlington. For three or four years in the early ’60s Joyce worked for bookbinders Wagner & Ragan just off City Road. In the early ’60s I first lived in an attic room at 442 Abercrombie Street and afterwards in a share house at 5 Caroline Street. In 1974-5 I had stints at International House and the Myrtle Street House. I joined Darlington Branch ALP connecting me up with Trevor Davies and Barrie McMahon. So did Joyce, from which base she contested preselection against Sandra Nori in 1988, causing all sorts of ructions in the inner-west left.”
Very recently, on May 26, 2017, in a speech to launch the Change Is Gonna Come exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, daughter Evette Clague spoke proudly on her activist mother’s behalf: “This year is the 42nd anniversary of a voter education program in the NT that was funded and supported by members of the Aboriginal Australian Fellowship. This is the same collective of Sydney-based activists that were prominent in the Referendum campaign – Bert Groves, Helen Palmer, Jack and Jean Horner, Hans and Faith Bandler, Emil and Hannah Witton, Len and Mona Fox.
“The booklet, ‘Voting in the Northern Territory’, was published and distributed to communities across the NT. It was financed from the Grace Bardsley Aboriginal Fund honouring Mum’s amazing friend, a leading member of the Fellowship. Translations were prepared in Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara.
“In February just past Mum celebrated another 42nd anniversary. She returned to her home Yaegl community with Dad and my three sisters in tow, knowing that change was urgently needed there. I turned up a few years later although I wasn’t part of the change she had in mind.
“In May 1975 … Nungera Co-operative Society Ltd was registered. Nungera immediately embarked on a program to remedy a chronic housing shortage confronting the families of Yaegl community. At an auction held on this fourth Saturday in May they purchased four surplus ex-NSW Public Works dwellings in little more than an hour for the grand sum of $40,000 …
“Change is not ‘gonna come’, but change has come and will continue to come in the face of oppression, disadvantage and discrimination while ever and wherever there are people brave enough and cheeky enough to give change a nudge here and a big fat shove there.”
The Clague family were at Sydney Town Hall on June 1 for the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum Celebratory Dinner. The event was hosted by Reconciliation Australia, Gadigal Information Service and the City of Sydney Council.
