- That portraiture that you've done, shows, you know, a young Elder in the making. That's what it does. That's what it is. So, reflecting on that face you see, in that, 2012 was it, photographic portraiture prize-winning entry, was that I had a look of, "I'm here," you know, "I'm regaining that which was lost." Seeing those portraitures of my five-times great-grandfather, Mannalargenna, and Woretermoeteyenner, my four-times great-grandmother, who married a Briggs, and that's where the Briggs names comes from, you know, these photographs have a telling impact and they're very forceful because they bring to light the hidden, stolen, and denied history,
- Heritage, yeah.
- you know, my history and that, that I was never allowed to know. You know, I was stolen under the assimilation policy, and I was in the Box Hill Boys' Home to assimilate. Well, I truly did assimilate, you know? But it broke apart the notion that I was an orphan, for one, and there's something more to be, you know, with me, than being a dark-skinned person. I was Aboriginal and that, you know? I believe in the 50s, an Uncle Henry and Amy Charles came in to take me out for a picnic and said they were my uncle and auntie, and I said, "Oh, beaut, you know, "it's the first time I'm meeting family." Didn't make such a big impact on me, but I expected them to come back the next week. They didn't, you know? And just before I left the boys' home, about a month before, a group of other Aboriginal kids came in and one of them was Archie, or Arthur Charles, and he had the last name. I remember saying to him, "Funny if we were brothers, mate, hey?" You know? And I wrote this in the book and play and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, living with widow Murphy and her twin bodgie sons up in Blackburn, I still had that sense of Christianity about me, that I felt the need to sneak out the bedroom window to go to the Methodist service in the Blackburn Village, and she busted me one time, Mrs. Murphy. Came into the church, bold as brass, and grabs me by my ear 'ole and says, "You gotta go to work tomorra!" It's exciting times, you know, "Oh, Mum, very embarrassing" and that, but I kept on going back to that church mob. Because of that, we had a little entertainment unit and we used to entertain the old people's homes, and that, and the church. But we traipsed on up to the Nunawading Girls' Home and put on a concert there, and there, were these two small waif-like Aboriginal children.
- The old sisters!
- and, of course, I accosted them, Esmae and Eva Jo. They were my sisters. I said, "It'd be funny if we were brothers and sisters, you know?"
- Well you've got just more extended family now too.
- Yes, yes. So I'm gonna get Ernie Dingo to help me find out these Charleses over in Roebourne, if there are. I'm missing six siblings. Well, they're not all there now, I suppose. I'm the first, born '43. There are eight between Esmae and Eva Jo and myself. Eight years. So, there's eight. Two died at stillbirth. That's six. But, yes, I'm the last of my mob, you know, albeit the males of my mob, that I know of so far. And that's the thing, that we members of the Stolen Generations, have had to put up with, had to stomach, that there are certain bits and pieces of our history that we're never going to get to know. We might have a... somebody might tell us things that they suspect, this and that and t'other, but you never do get the full benefit. But you know, I'm grateful that "Who Do You Think You Are?" have given me much of what I've needed to know. So, people of the Stolen Generations like myself, you know, harping back to those photographs and et cetera, you know, this is a story that's been unfolding for generations here in Australia, in so many other people's lives, and mine's a variation on the similar, on the same theme, of the missing, denied, stolen history, and where it takes a lifetime to achieve it. Some people never do. And I'm not only talking about Aboriginal people, but I'm still talking about the forgotten Australians, of which I was lumbered in with, at the Box Hill Boys' Home. And so I was well on the way of recovery, even just before I left jail. I was starting to think like an Elder. I wasn't doing any burglaries. I was thinking of myself, "Yes, I'm a man beyond reproach. "I'll settle down "and I'll be an instrument in the humanities." But that didn't work, so the people in the arts picked me up. Because once the people in the arts, Rod, realised that I was performing on stage, or in front of a camera, with no poo enhancing my performances, no heroin enhancing my performances, they grabbed me in the lap, you know? So doing so many episodes, of so many different series in the one month, "Rake", "Wolf Creek", "Clever Man", Black Comedy. You know, all these people lapping me up, and I'm lapping it all up, you know, getting work, you know, getting back into it, because everybody loves to see and witness for themselves the story of a reformed, rehabilitated, old coot that they feel they know so well, they've been following for such a long time, before following got, you know, You know, I find it very strange, because I am Jack Charles, I am JC. I am perhaps the second coming, brown like the original. Who can tell? Because people just love that story, and you've been contributing, with that...
- Not really.
- And it's very evident. That story floats through with that portraiture up there at the National Gallery.
- [Rod] At the end of the film, where you've come out of the nick for the last time, you're swearing you're gonna get off the white stuff, and you sort of drive off into the future on your little scooter,
- [Jack] Oh, my! Yes.
- [Rod] with this feeling of optimism. And that's how it came about.
- [Jack] It did. Oh, right. Yeah. Yes, yes, because-
- [Rod] So, within a year or two, and we got the portrait prize and then, you know, joking about late blossoming, but blossoming, blooming all over the place.
- [Jack] Oh yes, yes, yes. I'm an evergreen.
