Footy The La Perouse Way

Clip 1: ‘Lapa’

Taken from the documentary Footy The La Perouse Way (2006)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG

Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

An RSL Club, and a raffle is taking place. Players from the La Perouse Panthers have gathered for the team’s fundraiser. Bruce ‘Lapa’ Stewart, community elder and former La Perouse player, speaks into a microphone. Bruce talks to camera about his days of playing football. Photographs show the Lapa team in the 1930s as an all-Black team. Historical footage of tin huts on the beach, or the mission. Voice-over narration speaks of the common bond of poverty during the Depression. Bruce tells how the community became truly multicultural. Footage of La Perouse versus Mascot. A grade coach Chris ‘Offo’ Sait talks to his players.

Curator’s notes

A well documented transformation of the La Perouse Aboriginal community into a multicultural community.

Romaine Moreton, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows Bruce ‘Lapa’ Stewart addressing patrons at a Sydney RSL club. In interview he talks about the history of the La Perouse United Football Club, which plays Rugby League football, and about his early experiences as a player in the 1950s. As a narrator talks about the all-Black team of the 1930s and the multicultural club of the 1950s, archival team photographs and photographs of the beach shantytown where the La Perouse community lived are shown. Stewart reminisces about the 1950s, when team members were accepted regardless of their background. The final scenes show a game between La Perouse and Mascot.

Educational value points

Indigenous Australians have lived at what is now known as La Perouse, located at the entrance to Botany Bay, for thousands of years. Their appearance was noted by Captain Cook in 1770 and later by the French explorer La Perouse. The local Indigenous population was decimated by smallpox, which was inadvertently brought by La Perouse and his crew, who camped in the area for 6 weeks in 1788. Missionaries arrived in 1885, and in 1889 the New South Wales Aborigines Mission was established at La Perouse. Large numbers of displaced Aboriginal people from along the south coast of NSW moved onto the Mission in the 1940s and 50s. There is still a significant Indigenous community at La Perouse.

The clip gives an example of a sporting club that provides a sense of community and interracial acceptance. The club began as an all-Black team but during the Great Depression in the 1930s Aboriginal people at La Perouse were joined by hundreds of non-Indigenous unemployed homeless people. The shared experience of poverty united the Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and the La Perouse United Football Club was formed. The Club now has ten teams, embracing members from many different cultural backgrounds.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were brought together during the Depression years at La Perouse and lived in makeshift settlements such as those seen in the clip. They formed a close-knit community due to their common experience of unemployment and their isolation from mainstream society. When the Depression eased, the non-Indigenous inhabitants moved away and in the 1950s the huts were bulldozed by the local council.

Rugby League football, seen in the clip, is one of the two codes of rugby, the other being Rugby Union. While sharing a common origin they now have different rules. Rugby League is played with two teams of 13 players, the aim being to carry the ball up the field towards the opposing team’s goal, where the ball is grounded to score a ‘try’, earning the right to attempt to ‘convert’ the try by kicking a goal.