Brendan Moore

LM: Hi there. My name is Luisa Mitchell and I’m a Nyungar woman. 

Today we present to you Backyard Truthtelling: stories from Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that were shared in local resident’s backyards all around Walyalup.  

Walyalup is the Nyungar name for Fremantle, located on the southern end of what is now called Western Australia. Just like the rest of Australia, Walyalup is an ancient country and belongs to one of the world’s oldest surviving cultures, the Whadjuk Nyungar people.  

In this collection, you’re about to hear live recordings from people who spoke about difficult truths, hidden histories and reimagined futures, all reflections of their lived experiences of colonisation in Walyalup and Australia.  

In partnership with the City of Fremantle and produced by Centre for Stories, these stories were captured on Whadjuk Nyungar boodjar. We pay our respect to Whadjuk Elders, and all Aboriginal people from the beginning, who are the knowledge-keepers and custodians of this place. 

And, before we get started, a brief disclaimer. This story may contain references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories and practices. It may also include language that some individuals may find distressing or triggering. We acknowledge the ongoing impact of colonisation and the importance of truth telling and respecting Indigenous perspectives and experiences. We also know that these stories may be most triggering for mob, for Aboriginal and Torres strait islander people. So, if you’re struggling while listening to this story, please don’t hesitate to connect with 13 YARN on 13 92 76 and talk with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander crisis supporter. 

In this episode, you will hear Brendan Moore’s story. Brendan is a Whadjuk Noongar from Walyalup but grew up at Dandaragan in Yued country. He has worked in many different roles but is currently with the City of Fremantle after 13 years. Brendan also sits on the Wadjemup Aboriginal Reference Group. This is Brendan. 

BM: There’s a there’s a kind of emptiness when you’re swimming in the middle of the ocean. You can’t see the mainland where you left, or the island where you’re going to or the bottom of the ocean. And that’s something that engulfed me. It was 11 years ago and I was at my desk at Fremantle and opened an email asking for an Aboriginal team to swim to Rottnest Island across the channel. 

And, also be taken by it, but, I think, in the background of it, it wasn’t the story that needed to be told about Rottnest, which was that it was an Aboriginal men’s prison for about 100 years. And, over that time, 3700 Aboriginal men from Western Australia were sent there and about 370 buried there on the island. 

And my great-great-grandfather, Tommy Nettle, survived Rottnest Island. And he also survived settlement. He was born at the train station, where the train station is in Perth, on Whadjuk land. Around about settlement, and that that time, there was about 300 Whadjuk people that lived, on what is the greater Perth area, north and south of the Derbarl Yerrigan and up to the Darling Range. And in 2011, only nine of those 300 people survived. And, some of us are ancestors of those original Whadjuk people. 

And so my great-great-grandfather managed to survive Rottnest as well as the original settlement. So I feel strong knowing my great-grandfather survived. But there’s a generally held stereotype, racist stereotype that Aboriginal people can’t swim. And I guess that’s what drew me into the idea of being able to make this work. So, so what we did was, we need to get a, I needed to get a medical. 

And of course, when I was four years old, I had the measles and got very ill. And I actually had to spend some time in hospital because I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and, in about 1975, mum and dad had four kids. So, they left me in hospital. And I was told, you know, be a good boy. 

We’ll come and pick you up. And I don’t remember much about that. But I just remember that I think it made me more resilient, determined, and perhaps hardened because of it. So, when I came out of hospital, I was in a playpen for a while because I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed to do anything strenuous on my on my heart. 

And, I think dad carried me around a fair bit. And I was on a course of epithelium for about ten years. So for my checkup, the cardiologist suggested I have a few tests, and it turns out I didn’t have rheumatic fever, but I had a PDA. And so, the good thing about that was I was quite happy because I could then I could try out for this Rottnest swim. And so, I tried my little heart out, and I was selected for the team, along with a couple of Aboriginal women from the Kimberley and Dennis Simmons from down here. And, we trained together for six months. 

So, we had a really good team and we were told in a 50-meter pool, that if we swim and we count our strokes, we should only be doing about 50 strokes or otherwise, if we’re doing much more than that. You know, it’s 19,700 metres and we’re going to puff ourselves out, essentially. So, just because you’re moving your arms like an eggbeater doesn’t mean you’re going fast. 

So, it made us look at our technique, and, so anyway, that sort of resonated with me in terms of a whole lot of things about breaking things down and understanding things. So, I was pretty confident that we could make it because we were, you know, swimming probably 15 kilometres a week. 

So, and I had some good parents as role models. And dad had successfully farmed, had started to farm in 1973 up at Dandaragan, and mum was a fierce protector against racist stereotypes, against Aboriginal people, that Aboriginal people can’t achieve. 

So, both parents, I think provided an environment of good old fashioned hard work, where I was able to be in charge of my own future and, and I think, I’m a product of that, a person with sort of passion and purpose and, and equal amounts of self-confidence and self-doubt. I’m certainly not a victim, and I think I can do just about almost anything. 

So, we train, as I said, for about six months in the last week of training, the coach says, there’s nothing more we can do now. And, actually suggested that we all taper off and slow down. And I guess the possibility that we might fail had suddenly dawned on me. 

And, and that if we did fail, even if it was the weather that changed and we couldn’t make it, would confirm the stereotype that, so the stakes were quite raised. And so during the swim, you know, it was a feeling sometimes when you’re in the deep blue sea, and particularly when some of the team mates feel sick and your rotation gets increased and more frequently, but knowing that circumstances change and things improve, if you just put your head down and keep trying. 

This is what I think I dug deep for. And towards the end of the swim, we could see Phillip Rock and the ecstasy that we were going to make it. And individually as a team and also to break down that, racist stereotype that Aboriginal people can swim, and as were coming in to the island, I could hear these chains when I was swimming and, and then I’d pull my head out and I couldn’t hear anything, stick my head back under, and you could hear these chains getting louder and louder as i got into the island and sort of brought my memory back to those images of the Aboriginal people that were brought down, in chains. 

So we’d finished the swim and we, I was asked how we did it and sort of my answer was one stroke at a time, but honestly, it was pure hard work. And it’s something that requires complete commitment through some difficult times of self-doubt, loneliness, that come from being underwater for weeks and months of training. 

With all that time underwater, it brought a kind of peace though, in solitude, a mindfulness you can only experience underwater. Thanks.