60 years on from the Freedom Ride campaign for Indigenous rights and facility access

This week marks 60 years from the 1965 Freedom Ride - a major milestone in the civil rights of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people in Australia - during which a group of students from the University of Sydney championed Indigenous rights and facility access in NSW.

The initiative - which came to be known as the Freedom Ride - visited the NSW towns of Walgett, Gulargambone, Kempsey, Bowraville and Moree, highlighting the rampant racial segregation and discrimination against Indigenous Australians at the time.

The ride was led by one of the first Indigenous students at the University of Sydney, Charles Perkins, and joined by around 30 other, predominantly non-Indigenous students.

While it may be hard to think of a swimming pool as being at the centre of social change, events at the Moree Baths (today known as the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre) became a key milestone in the recognition of indigenous rights.

In 1964, at the height of the civil rights campaign in the USA, a University of Sydney protest against racial segregation in the United States had led to the students being urged to look to their own backyard if they wanted to draw attention to racial discrimination. This led the students to focus their attention on entrenched racism and segregation that existed in country towns in NSW at that time.

The Freedom Ride planned to raise awareness of the poor state of Aboriginal health, education and housing; to help to lessen the socially discriminatory barriers which existed between Aboriginal and white residents; and to encourage and support Aboriginal people themselves to resist discrimination.

Aboard their ‘freedom bus’, the students visited towns in north western NSW, witnessing Aboriginal people being routinely barred from registered clubs, swimming pools, hotels and cafes.

This led to the students demonstrating against racial discrimination practised at the Moree Baths, the Kempsey Baths and the Walgett Returned Services League Club and Cinema. They not only challenged these practices, but they ensured that reports of their demonstrations and local townspeople's hostile responses were available for news broadcasts on radio and television.

When the evening news broadcast the Vice-President of the Walgett RSL saying that he would never allow an Aboriginal to become a member into the living rooms of Australians, city viewers began to pressure State and Federal Governments for change.

At Moree, the students focused on the town baths where a Council by-law barred Aborigines, or persons "with an mixture of Aboriginal blood" from using the swimming pool.

Although the students were able to accompany Aboriginal youngsters from the reserve outside town into the pool, subject to the manager checking their ‘cleanliness’, the ban was reimposed once the students left. This led to the pool becoming a scene of tension and aggression when the students returned and attempted to assist Aboriginal children to enter the pool.

Backed by NSW Police, locals angrily defended the race-based ban which led to violence, arrests and The Freedom Riders being escorted out of town.

Although they did not return, The Freedom Riders protests were widely reported in newspapers across Australia, and around the world, and their campaigning led to change.

By May 1965, after legal advice that their ban was legally invalid, Moree Council scrapped the by-law that prevented Aborigines from using its pool

2020: Indigenous Australians priced out of the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre?
In 2020, a report in Guardian Australia indicated that an equivalent to segregation might still exist at the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre (MAAC) as a result of charges to enter the facility being beyond the reach of the area’s poorer residents.

A report in the Guardian Australia suggested that, 60 years on, "segregation still exists at the pool in the form of an entry price so steep few can afford to go there".

With the Guardian Australia having collated the entry fees charged by council-operated swimming pools in each of the NSW’s 129 local government areas, analysis showed that the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre (MAAC) is one of the two most expensive public swimming pools in NSW.

MAAC was given national heritage status in 2013 because of its “outstanding value to the nation” as the place where "student protests in 1965 highlighted the legalised segregation and racism experienced by Aboriginal people.”

Images: A confrontation between NSW Police, local residents and Freedom Ride participants at the Moree Baths in 1965 (top, credit: Tribune/SEARCH Foundation, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales), the Freedom Riders and their campaign bus in 1965 (middle, credit: Ann Curthoys) and a contemporary newspaper headline (below).