THE CONTRARIAN: The spirit of a hunter, the heart of a Blackfella

Bill Hunter and Gary Foley from the 1970s film Backroads, the first feature by Phillip Noyce (director of Rabbit-Proof Fence). Hunter passed away recently, after succumbing to liver cancer.

NATIONAL: GARY FOLEY* pays tribute to an old mate following the passing of a much acclaimed Australian actor.

I had the honour of paying my respects to Bill Hunter at a memorial service at the Princes Theatre in Melbourne on May 26. I began by paying my respects to the traditional owners of the land, something Billy Hunter would have wanted me to do, even though some in the new Government in Victoria may think it inappropriate.

I met Billy Hunter sometime in the late 60s or early 70s through my cousin Gary Williams. He’d been a mate ever since. In all those 40 years or more, as he became one of the best known faces in Australian film, he remained the same Billy to his friends. He was a decent, egalitarian, knockabout larrikin.

On screen Bill was often the Australian all Australians saw themselves to be. His generosity of spirit was, perhaps, matched only by his capacity for liquid spirits.

I first met him in a range of jazz clubs and bars around Kings Cross and Darlinghurst in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In those days, Gary Williams and myself were young black power political activists during the day and hunters and collectors at night, as we sought out fellow free spirits.

In our wanderings we encountered a motley but admirable assortment of actors, artists, writers, musicians and libertarians. They included the likes of Max Cullen, Dennis Miller, Rob Steele, Marcus Cooney, Merv Rutherford… and Big Bad Bill.

Those two young mad Redfern black power advocates and Bill got on like a house on fire. I soon realised he was also acquainted with a lot of blackfellas around NSW.

He was one of the few Australians we met then who seemed quite at ease in the company of Gooris, and who had an insight into the experience of our people when confronted with white racist attitudes, something Billy would never tolerate.

Billy Hunter knew and understood blackfellas. He certainly had a greater knowledge and understanding of blackfellas than the current Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin and the architects of the Northern Territory intervention. And, I’m also reasonably certain Billy would not have minded if I point out that Native Title is Not Land Rights, and Reconciliation is Not Justice!

Back in 1975 I was approached by film director Phil Noyce. I conned him into thinking that he was conning me into acting in his first film Backroads.

We needed a white actor who could play the role of the white racist ocker. I immediately thought of Billy.

I knew he had unique insight into both the Aboriginal community as well as white ockerdom.

Despite Noyce’s inaccurate claim in his sanitised biography, From Backroads to Hollywood that he, and someone else, chose Hunter for the role of Jack in Backroads, it was, in fact, I who insisted on Bill for the role.

This led to me receiving my notorious first lesson in acting from the legendary Bill Hunter. The night before we were to start shooting Backroads, sitting by a campfire on the outskirts of Bourke, I confessed to Billy that I had conned Noyce into thinking that I could act. I was worried about what would happen the next morning when the camera was about to roll.

Billy looked at me and said, “Don’t worry Foles, just watch me and follow what I do and say in the morning”. I said OK, and I wondered what Billy had in mind.

The next morning at 5am, Billy said to me ‘watch this’ and he walked up to Noyce and told him we were not going to start work until there was two slabs of cold beer on set.

Noyce was flummoxed by this demand, but Billy was insistent. Noyce somehow managed to find and produce two cold cartons of VB by 6am.
Billy then turned to me and said, “Right Foley! This is your first acting lesson. Help me drink this!”

That was the last time I was sober for the whole shoot of Backroads. This is evident if you have seen the film.

But it did make me think I could act… for the next six weeks anyway. In his biography Noyce claimed he was still too inexperienced as a Director back in 1976 to know you could and should use prop (fake) alcohol in a film.

I think that was just an excuse for being too scared to stand up to Bill. As a result Billy and I had a ball making Backroads. The completely improvised dialogue between Bill and I in Backroads is, in my view, among the best improvising in any Australian film ever.

My next significant encounter with Bill was on the French Riviera at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

On the basis that Backroads was screening, I had conned a fare to Cannes out of the Australian Council for the Arts, and had arrived with just 30 English Pounds in my pocket, and nowhere to stay.

At first I tried to get Phil Noyce to shout me a hotel room but he balked at the expense. Then I bumped into Bill.

“Don’t worry Foles,” he said, “Me and some actor mates have rented this huge villa, come and camp with us.”

Actors Roger Ward, Peter Sumner, Bill and others had rented a palatial mansion owned by some oil millionaire.

I managed to live like a king for the two weeks, courtesy of Bill. Over the next 30 years, Billy and I would bump into each other regularly, usually in a pub or bar in Carlton, Fitzroy or Collingwood. We would relive our past adventures and plot new ones. Sadly, they never survived the planning stage. But it was always a pleasure to catch up with him and share an ale or three, even though I had cut back drastically on my drinking after I turned 40.

As he grew more well-known through his films, he never sought to prove anything by rushing off to Hollywood and big-time fame and glory. I thought it admirable he chose to stay here and walk the streets as the normal bloke he was.

He had his moments in the spotlight and on the red carpet. But he always felt more comfortable in the company of ordinary Australian men and women. Ordinary Australian people responded. They loved him for it.

My Facebook page was inundated upon news of his passing with tributes by hundreds of people who had encountered Billy in some pub or on the street and had been deeply touched by his humility and humanity.

The stories these people poured out showed the deep warmth and love that the people of Australia had for him.

In some ways I think of Bill Hunter as a white Lionel Rose, in the sense that he was a man who all Australians seemed to have a deep emotional connection with, and who was consequently loved by all.

Billy may have been born with a white skin, but he had the heart of a blackfella. That’s the greatest compliment I could ever pay to any person.

• Gary Foley has over the past 40 years been an activist, actor, academic, arts bureaucrat, museum curator and writer, and today describes himself as an ‘elderly anarchist agitator’, as well as being a historian and lecturer at Victoria University. Gary is currently completing a PhD in History at the University of Melbourne.