VINCE’S FRIEND LAURIE
Vince told me most of the stories in The Wonder of Little Things over the phone, him in Adelaide and me in Melbourne. Being unable to see him in person and notice his facial expressions and gestures, increasingly I tuned my ear to his voice. I learned to listen carefully, not just for his stories, but for the emotions flowing through them.
Whenever Vince spoke about his former fellow boarders at St Francis House, an Anglican home for Aboriginal boys in the Adelaide suburb of Semaphore, I’d hear humour, excitement, frustration, anger, sadness, tenderness and more. The St Francis House boys were like brothers to each other.
Vince next to the St Francis House memorial stone, at Glanville Hall, now a function centre. [Copley family collection]
One boy Vince was particularly close to was Laurie Bray. Vince was small for his age and Laurie was tall, as you can see in the photo below. Laurie became Vince’s protector, although not until after a dispute one Saturday morning at the home, where Vince stood his ground in a stoush involving a mop, Laurie, and another boy called Peter Tilmouth. See pp 61-62 adult edition; pp 82-84 young readers.
Laurie, Vince and some of the other St Francis House boys beside the home on their way to school. Laurie is on the far left, then Desi Price, Kenny Hampton, Richie Bray (Laurie’s brother), Malcolm Cooper, Gordon Briscoe, Ron Tilmouth, Vince, Gerry Hill and Wilf Huddleston. [Copley family collection and the P. McD. Smith MBE and St Francis House Collection www.stfrancishouse.com.au]
Vince tells other stories about Laurie – how he liked to wear a double-breasted coat to school rather than a pullover and how he showed early promise as an artist. The closeness between Vince and Laurie was clear whenever Vince talked about those early days. Laurie didn’t appear in Vince’s later stories and when I asked him why, he said Laurie left the boys home after primary school and they lost contact for a while. When Vince was in his twenties, he found Laurie again. He was living in Port Augusta, painting and selling landscapes in a style similar to Albert Namatjira. See pp 284-285 adult edition; pp 267-269 young readers.
Laurie died in his late thirties.
Vince remembered sometime later being at an Adelaide indoor bowling alley, where two big landscape murals caught his eye. He had a hunch and looked closer: there was Laurie’s signature. Vince’s first thought was, Oh mate, that’s just so sad. It reminded him of how much had been lost with Laurie’s early death. Over the years, whenever Vince was in art galleries he’d look out for Laurie’s paintings, but never came across others.
After Vince told me this, I went online to see what I could find. Laurie’s name turned up at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in Canberra. I emailed them and a staff member replied with a catalogue of images of four of his landscape paintings from their archives. I printed then posted them to Vince. He was delighted.
We talked about how it would be great to go to Canberra together one day to see them. But we never did: the pandemic held on and then Vince died. Eight months after The Wonder of Little Things was published, I headed there on my own, to make something of a pilgrimage to Vince and his friend.
On a clear autumn afternoon, I met up with Anne Faris, the Access Officer for Collections Development at NMA. As she led me through a rabbit warren of corridors, she told me a story of her own connection to one of the St Francis House boys Vince was particularly close to: John Moriarty. As it turned out, Anne had grown up in Adelaide and lived in the same suburb as John and his wife Ros. Anne’s sister even used to babysit their children.
In the NMA display room, the team at the museum had carefully set out Laurie’s four paintings on a large table. All four were in the style of the Hermannsburg painters. One had vibrant orange shades of the central desert country, with mountains and trees in the distance that gave me a deep sense of the vastness of Country there. Two were of a similar scene, in different styles, and the fourth had brilliant gold and orange hues that thrummed with colour and life.
While copyright protections mean I can’t include photos of the paintings here, Mbantua Art Gallery in Alice Springs has one of Laurie’s works for sale, here. You can also read more about Laurie’s art here.
Anne told me Laurie’s paintings were part of a collection of over 2000 artworks gathered by various Aboriginal Affairs departments in Canberra between 1967 – when the successful Referendum to change two clauses in the Constitution that negatively impacted Aboriginal people was held – and 2005, when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was abolished.
Not long after my Canberra visit, Anne happened to be in Adelaide and we caught up for a coffee at the South Australian Museum. By that stage Vince’s family and I had started talking about how we might one day archive Vince’s papers for future researchers and scholars. Anne was a great help in explaining how to go about it.
A few days later, she sent me contact details of an archivist at the State Library of South Australia. In her email, Anne added that on her plane trip home, the woman she was sitting next to was reading The Wonder of Little Things.
Anne’s a very generous person and it’s been a joy to meet her through Vince and his stories.
If any of Laurie’s family happen to read this, Vince’s family and I would be happy to meet up anytime. Feel free to get in touch through this website’s contact page.
With Anne Faris in Adelaide in October 2023
© 2024 This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Acknowledgement: Vince’s continuing legacy has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.