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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this article contains images of people who have died.
After Kevin Coombs hilariously recounts gifting Prince Charles a woodchopping axe from the Australian Paralympic Team 40-odd years ago – nearly sparking a security incident – the conversation turns serious.
Was it awkward for you to present a gift to the future King, given that just a few years earlier you weren’t even counted as an Australian citizen?
“Not at all, mate,” Coombs fires back.
“It’s better than being remembered as a bit of flora and fauna, which is what we were before we were counted.
“They knew how many sheep were in Australia. They knew how many cattle were in Australia. They couldn’t tell you how many Aboriginal people were in Australia.”
There’s a stinging honesty in Coombs’ delivery. One of the 82-year-old’s regular lines is ‘That’s just how it was at the time’. It’s these reality checks, sprinkled throughout his many light-hearted stories, that remind you of Coombs’ gravitas. They are examples of what it really means to pioneer, inspire and overcome.
They are the moments you realise Coombs is in a class all his own.
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To the Australian Paralympic Movement and far beyond, Kevin Coombs OAM PLY is an icon. At age 18, six years after he acquired paraplegia in a shooting accident, he became one of the 12 revered athletes to represent Australia at the first Paralympic Games, in Rome in 1960. There, he became the first Indigenous Australian to compete at the Games, pre-dating the first Indigenous Olympians by four years.
Coombs competed primarily in wheelchair basketball at five Paralympics in total, leading the team in 1972 and 1984, and captaining the entire Australian Paralympic Team in 1980. He later had a distinguished working career in community services and health, including as manager of the Victorian Koori Health Unit.
Coombs was awarded an OAM in 1983, has a street named after him at Sydney Olympic Park and carried the Torch into the stadium at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. He’s in the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame, was an inaugural inductee into the Paralympics Australia Hall of Fame and the Uncle Kevin Coombs Medal for the Spirit of the Games is presented at PA awards ceremonies. As much as he is respected for his achievements, Uncle Kevin is beloved for his humour, enthusiasm and humility.
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On this day, in the Kevin Coombs Room at Paralympics Australia’s Melbourne office, Australia’s Paralympic patriarch is explaining his ancestry to Grace Sarra, a Gooreng Gooreng and Taribelang woman from Queensland’s Bundaberg region and PA’s Reconciliation Action Plan Coordinator.
The theme for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee Week, NAIDOC Week, is ‘For Our Elders’, making it a perfect time for Sarra and Coombs to meet.
“My ancestors come from around Dimboola way, which is out near Horsham. They’re the Wotjobaluk,” Coombs says. “But I was born in Swan Hill, which is Wemba Wemba country, right on the Murray. So, I’m a Wemba Wemba person.”
Among those from around Dimboola were Kevin’s grandfather Alfred Coombs and Alfred’s brother Willie, who both enlisted in 1916 and were injured on the Western Front.
“My uncle Bill was only 15 when he went. He came back because he got gassed. He lost a finger as well, got shot in the hand.
“Uncle Bill, after that, he didn’t want to be around people. He and his wife would come in every month to get what they needed at the shops and go bush again. He was a pretty lost soul, I guess. He didn’t want to be around people because he’d seen the worst of people back in the war.”
Bill had also been shunned by the country he fought for.
“I’m still waiting for our block of land,” Coombs says ironically, referring to the post-war Soldier Settlement Scheme whereby returned servicemen were given land and a pension.
“If you went to the First World War you got a soldier settlement,” Coombs says. “Not Aboriginals. But that’s the way it was at the time.”
Sarra sees a parallel.
“You did quite a similar thing to your uncle Bill,” she says. “You went and represented our country without being recognised as a citizen.”
“That’s right,” Coombs replies. “I’ve still got the passport at home and it says ‘British subject’. I’m Australian – and I represented my country on a British passport.
“We didn’t get any rights until ‘67. It’s very important to remember those times. You tell young people today about that and they just look at you and say, ‘That’s bullshit’. I say ‘Mate, read your history’.”
Sarra feels the same way. “Last Friday at a workshop I put up two photos of my family, one from 1966 and one from 2010,” she says.
“I asked them what’s the difference? People were saying ‘these ones are younger’, ‘there’s more people in that photo’, one woman said ‘they look happier’.
“In the photo from 1966, I said, the difference is that these people were not classed as citizens or human beings.”
Coombs has said his piece on being deprived citizenship.
“As an 18-and-a-half-year-old kid, a piece of paper didn’t worry me,” he says, diverting to what he felt was a bigger issue at the time, that the accommodation at Rome 1960 was up two flights of stairs and the athletes needed to be carried up.
#NRW2023: A time to listen, learn and try to understand.
— AUS Paralympic Team (@AUSParalympics) May 31, 2023
That’s what the launch of the first stage of Paralympics Australia’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) was all about 👇#ImagineWhatWeCanDo @RecAustralia pic.twitter.com/FYvPXs0NFE
Since those days, the Paralympic Games has become by far the world’s biggest event celebrating diversity and inclusion. Yet, more than 60 years since Coombs led the way, Paralympics Australia’s record of facilitating and developing First Nations people’s involvement in Para-sport remains sadly lacking.
In May, Paralympics Australia launched the first stage of its Reconciliation Action Plan, committing to better engage and open doors to sport for Indigenous people with a disability.
Coombs is looking through the RAP booklet while Sarra explains more.
“The main goals are to raise awareness within PA and our ecosystem about First Nations athletes and culture,” she says. “We want to create culturally safe spaces for First Nations athletes to bring their full self and feel comfortable and confident when they compete.
“We’ve only had 16 First Nations Paralympians. We want to see more athletes like yourself come through the pathways and compete at the Games.”
Coombs wants to show the PA RAP to his daughter Janine, who has been involved in a similar project at Collingwood Football Club.
“You’ve always got to remember where you’ve come from and what’s been achieved,” Coombs says.
Sarra holds up the PA RAP booklet.
“This is where we come from,” she says. “This is your legacy.”
Read: Much Work To Do, But RAP Launch Was A Day To Listen
By: David Sygall, Paralympics Australia
Posted: 3 July 2023
