TELLING vince’s STORY
After Vince’s memoir was published, the editor of Griffith Review literary magazine, Carody Culver, invited me to write a piece on my experience as Vince’s co-author. It was a great chance to reflect on my friendship with Vince and all it led to. The piece was published in Griffith Review 84: Attachment Styles in May 2024 and is reprinted below. Even now, a couple of years later, I sometimes can’t believe we actually did it. As you’ll see, there were plenty of ups and downs, roundabouts, and detours along the way.
There’s someone I’d like to mention here, who usually prefers to be in the background and isn’t mentioned in the piece below - our literary agent, Clare Forster. Clare read an early draft in mid-2021 and saw straight away Vince’s uniqueness as a storyteller. She took us on, helped us shape the story more, and then found us a fantastic publisher in Jude McGee at ABC Books. Clare became a dear friend to Vince and spent precious time with him not long before he died. He was very thankful she came into his life.
And a quick plug for Griffith Review while I’m here: They’re great champions of Australian writers - both those relatively new to writing like me and those with long established careers. As well as publishing five of my stories the editors have encouraged me greatly with my work in progress. Managing editor John Tague has been particularly generous with his time and insights.
I hope you enjoy this story about how Vince and I wrote The Wonder of Little Things.
Intimacies, intricacies, cadences: On finding the beat of someone else’s voice
A FEW WEEKS into the first draft of what eventually became The Wonder of Little Things, I said to my co-author, Vince Copley – whose life story it is – ‘I don’t know whether I can do this.’ This being to turn the many stories he was telling me into a book.
On the other end of the phone, Vince – a Ngadjuri Elder – said, ‘I have every faith and trust in you, right. It doesn’t even exist that you’re not gonna do a good job.’
That way of his – of sending sentences in unusual directions by making the phrasing a bit different to the everyday, of double negatives where you least expect them, of undermining clichés – always made me tune in that bit more to what Vince was saying. I learnt to listen very carefully, and hear what was anything but a throwaway line or a glib phrase. I’d also hear the tenderness in his voice.
Vince was concerned for the project – of course he was. This book was something he and Brenda, his Welsh-Australian wife, wanted dearly. In the first instance it would be a record for their children, but they also knew Vince’s story was important beyond their family – he’d been a significant part of the movement for Aboriginal self-determination from the 1950s on, and a gifted and groundbreaking sportsman. We all hoped it would eventually be published.
An Aboriginal man in his eighties and a non-Indigenous woman in her sixties writing their first book together. What’s risky about that? ‘It doesn’t even exist that you’re not gonna do a good job.’ I wrote Vince’s words on a slip of paper and stuck it above my desk. In the months to follow, I’d often glance at it. Gradually Vince’s optimism took hold of me.
AROUND 2015, BEFORE I met Vince, I was living in Melbourne and feeling restless. I’d been making regular visits to the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre and was learning a lot about the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people and other Victorian Aboriginal nations. One day, as I listened to recordings of local Aboriginal people speaking their languages, it occurred to me that I didn’t know anything about the Ngadjuri people of South Australia’s Mid North, where I’d grown up. That place, my home for eighteen years, in a house on the edge of a small town next to hilly bushland, had no doubt shaped me in important ways. But I knew little of its deeper story. I decided to go back to see what I could find out, and came across a book about Ngadjuri that listed Vince as the contact person. When I phoned to see if I could meet him next time I was in Adelaide, he was very welcoming. A month later, I was knocking on his door. He greeted me with a big smile and led me down the hallway to Brenda and their dining table set out with savouries and scones she’d made. I instantly felt at home.
Over cups of tea, Vince was soon telling me stories. About his grandfather, his Ngadjuri heritage, the Aboriginal boys’ home he’d lived in for seven years, a small town called Curramulka where he’d captained and coached the local Australian Rules football team. He also told a story, in passing, about how his mum had to hide him from welfare after his dad died, when Vince was a small child.
While I’d read accounts of the Stolen Generations, I’d never before met anyone who nearly became part of them. Vince’s cheeriness was my dominant memory of this first meeting – his joy in his family, friends and sport – but I caught a glimpse of troubling layers in his life too.
Vince and Brenda invited me to visit next time I was in Adelaide, so I did, and then again and again, every few months. Vince would tell me stories and I’d be entranced by them but also, often enough, bamboozled. He’d meander through the 1940s, jump to the 2000s, then head back to the 1970s. One time he talked about a friend called Charlie from the boys’ home. I twigged. ‘You mean Charlie Perkins?’
‘Yes,’ said Vince. ‘My mate Charlie.’
And so the incredible story of St Francis House – a boys’ home in Adelaide, where many now-famous men spent their young years – started to come my way.
On my third visit, I asked Vince if I could do anything for him in return for the stories and knowledge he was sharing with me. When he learnt my day job involved research and writing, he soon found little projects, among them co-writing short pieces about Ngadjuri Country and about his grandfather, Barney Warrior, the last initiated Ngadjuri man.
Sometime in 2019, Vince and Brenda mentioned they were hoping to write a book about his life. Later that year, Vince and I visited Ngadjuri Country with historian Skye Krichauff, who we’d both come to know. Skye drove, with Vince in the passenger seat and me in the back, and as we headed north, then later south back to Adelaide, Skye asked Vince lots of questions about his life – where he was born, where he’d grown up, what it was like in the early days of the era of Aboriginal self-determination. I got out my notebook and started jotting down what became a basic chronology of the places he’d lived: Point Pearce, Adelaide, Leigh Creek, Alice Springs, the boys’ home, Curramulka, Melbourne for football, Canberra as a public servant and so on. Skye was fascinated by the parallels of Vince’s life with the bigger history she was so familiar with and urged Vince to write it down. Soon after that, he and I were chatting on the phone when the possibility of me working with him on the story came up. Vince was keen but left me space to say no, as he knew I had other commitments. Figuring I’d somehow find a way, I said yes.
I typed up the chronology I’d written in the back of Skye’s car and shared it with Vince and Brenda at our first session. It became a handy organising system for Vince to recall memories in an order I could follow. Whenever his memory jumped about, as memory does, or my curiosity went off on tangents, as curiosity does, it helped bring us back to solid ground. Originally we were going to record all the sessions in person. But the looming Covid pandemic sent me back to Melbourne and months of lockdowns, and we switched to phone.
After just a few sessions with Vince, I was struck by how easily the stories rolled from him – neat little pieces unfurling like short movies. Already I was thinking that a third-person narrative wouldn’t do him justice. I sent him a few memoirs and biographies, so he could see different ways we could do it. After reading one biography of a well-known Indigenous person, he told me about the many historical moments they’d shared, but there was doubt in his voice.
‘What’s bothering you?’ I asked.
‘Didn’t they have any friends?’ he answered. He was genuinely surprised at this lack in the story.
With another memoir, he was respectful but disappointed. ‘They never seem to have any fun in life, if I can put it that way.’ Of another, about a man who’d overcome alcohol addiction and made good of his life, Vince said he thought the actual story was about the bloke’s fight with himself, which wasn’t Vince’s own story.
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘To really enjoy life,’ he said. The context being, of course, that to be able to do that he’d had to work around prejudice and racism.
Vince’s storytelling was both elegant and down to earth. ‘What if we mostly use your own words,’ I said one day, ‘with just a tiny bit of tidying up and some extra history stitched in here and there?’
Vince said fine and our course was set. Later, when he finished reading the first full draft, he said, ‘That’s right. That’s my words. It’s just the plain, simple story of my life, put in the best way that I could put it in.’
VINCE AND I spent many hours on the phone, mine on speaker with my digital recorder next to it. As he spoke, I’d jot down keywords on a notepad, along with the time on the recorder. If I wanted to clarify something, I’d mark the spot with a big question mark, then when he’d paused long enough for me to know he’d finished a story, I’d take him back to my queries.
We went over many of the stories two, three and sometimes four times. Vince would recall more details each time and I’d then transcribe and stitch them in. Sometimes I’d compare two versions to see if the way he’d phrased one sounded better than the other. One day I began worrying that because of my inexperience, I was labouring more than was necessary. Out of the blue, a friend rang and asked how it was going. I told her my worry and she sent me an article she’d read about Keith Richards’ ghostwriter, James Fox. His tip: ‘Sometimes you have to have the same story again and again. By the fourth time, you’ll get the detail.’ I was in good company.
Vince’s recall of places and people was magnificent, but dates and times not so. Gradually I built up a series of timelines on Excel spreadsheets, covering his life, his grandparents and parents, siblings, Brenda’s family and the St Francis House boys – all lined up against historical events. I read history books, biographies and articles to crosscheck the facts. If I wasn’t confident we were accurate about something, I checked to make sure Vince had said it as ‘I think’ or ‘might have been’ – words he often used.
He was never defensive about what he didn’t know. As I gleaned information from the archives and shared it with him, he was simply grateful to have more pieces of the puzzle. These often sparked more of his own memories. It was fascinating to witness.
After a year I knew Vince’s doings pretty thoroughly. One day, we were going back over his Curramulka years when he said, ‘I was thirty when I got married.’ I knew that was wrong. ‘You were thirty-four,’ I deadpanned.
He laughed.
‘I know it’s your story,’ I said. ‘But I’m putting thirty-four.’
In the early days, Brenda was my go-to person for dates and details. She also alerted me to how humour was a big part of how they’d kept prejudice from affecting them too much. Where Vince meandered with his stories and was often gently funny, Brenda had a quick wit and loved ‘butting in’, as Vince put it. Whenever she did, he’d smile and then carry on. She was also fiercely protective of him and their family and friends. Vince tended to gloss over difficulties he’d personally faced as an Aboriginal man. It was Brenda who helped me see the sharper impact.
IN MAY 2020, not quite three months after starting the project, Vince rang me early in the day to cancel our afternoon session. Brenda had died suddenly that morning.
On the phone it’s hard to weigh a silence on the other end, to know if it’s heavy with grief or some other deep feeling. This happened often over the months after Brenda died, and not only when we were talking about her. Vince would go quiet and I’d wonder if the phone battery had run out – which occasionally it did. ‘Vince, are you there?’ I’d ask. Sometimes when he answered his voice would break and I’d realise he was deep in emotion. I’d wish in those moments I’d held my silence until he was ready to speak again.
A few weeks after Brenda’s death, Vince had wanted to push on with the rest of the story. Every now and then he’d say to me, ‘I’m not in a hurry, Lea, but I’m in a hurry.’ He had chronic health problems that regularly sent him to hospital. While we never put a deadline on the project, we were both aware of time running out.
In December 2020, between Melbourne lockdowns, I came over to Adelaide to talk to Vince about possible agents and publishers. I asked him what was most important to him and he was clear. Someone who thinks the story is good, he said, and who would support his way of telling it and let us include extra touches of information about the history he was part of. Vince also hoped it would reach young people, especially through schools.
When Melbourne went into its fifth or sixth lockdown, around June 2021, I decided to move back to Adelaide, where I also have family. While my life was hectic for a while, Vince and I kept things moving with the memoir. In August we accepted an offer from ABC Books to publish a general readers’ edition, to be followed a year or so later by a young readers’ edition. The day we signed the contract was very special.
Shortly after Christmas, the project took another major turn. Vince became seriously ill and needed to go to hospital. Tests showed his chronic illnesses had become much worse and there was nothing more the doctors could offer. He returned home to be with family for his final days. I spent time with him tying up loose threads for the book and quietly chatting with him and his family. He told me he trusted me to finish it, and he told his kids that too, and to do whatever they could to help take it to publication. They were very sad days, but also very purposeful and loving.
On Monday 10 January 2022, Vince died at home.
After his funeral, I began tightening up the manuscript. Doing this with the help of talented editors eased the sadness of finishing Vince’s memoir without him – we all worked together to make the book the best it could possibly be. Sometimes they’d suggest adding more historical detail. I’d spend time at the library reading stories about people who’d been part of the changes, then corroborate those accounts against official government records and other sources. When I was confident I had an accurate finding, I’d write a paragraph with the facts, then condense it down to a few words and insert it into the text as if Vince was saying it.
To make sure each of these insertions was true to Vince’s voice, I’d re-read the whole paragraph slowly to myself, nodding my head to the beats of his voice – a near permanent resident in my head at that stage – and checking that I hadn’t replaced his cadences with mine. If I wasn’t sure I had it right, I’d listen to audio of him talking, again nodding my head along to his voice, then I’d read the section again, this time out loud, and tweak it until I was certain it was as he would have said it. When his family read the final version of the whole book, they said it sounded just like he was talking to them.
Vince’s own words also suggested the book’s title. Often when he’d tell me a story of someone’s kindness, or of watching a bird in a tree, or of being on his Country, he’d pause then say, ‘all these little things’, savouring the pleasure of that remembered moment. Those little things brought him great joy, which he then touched others with. I was very lucky to be his friend. All because of a restlessness that led me back to Ngadjuri Country, a place we both had a connection to – mine recent, Vince’s since time began.
© 2024 Lea McInerney, first published in Griffith Review 84: Attachment Styles
Acknowledgement: Vince’s continuing legacy has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.