Melinda Smith #25 Mick Flick

Image from Sydney Festival (this is not a picture of Mick Flick)

Mick Flick

Collarenebri, New South Wales, mid-20th-century

Imagine him

forging up the main street

in full dress uniform

but going the wrong way

- no, going the other way

against the flow

of the ANZAC Day parade.

Breasting the khaki current

of Wilson St., staring with axe eyes

at a spot behind the marchers,

cleaving the neat ranks to turbulence.

What’s got into Mick ?

He’s always been alright for an Abo

Used to march with us once no worries

Imagine the gasps

from the watching families

with their little flags, drooping;

from his own family

who are as surprised as anyone

although they at least can read

the livid purpose in his face, guess the years

of anger thrashing in him

like a trapped eel. Nah, mate, you can’t join the RSL

Nah, mate, no Soldier Settlement Block for you

Only one of the white blokes he served with

still talks to him in public. Can’t you read ? The sign says

NO BLACKS IN THE FRONT BAR

He keeps shouldering through, jaw clamped like an ammo clip

Nah, mate, your kids can’t go to school here

- matter of fact, we’re going to take them off you

stomps on over the bridge to the far river bank

where he spends the rest of the day

pointedly

fishing.

(c) Melinda Smith 2016

Private Michael (Mick) Flick (1892-1963) was an Indigenous Australian who fought with the AIF as a volunteer in World War I, one of more than a thousand ‘black diggers’. His daughter recalls that, angry at his discriminatory treatment as a returned indigenous serviceman, he refused for several years to join the annual ANZAC Day march. One ANZAC Day, enraged at the threatened removal of his children, he suddenly decided to march again. Acknowledgement is due to historians Heather Goodall and John Maynard through whose work I first encountered Mick Flick’s story.