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She left Darwin in 1988 to join Fred and Douglas in Adelaide, where Fred had been appointed to an academic
position. She continued her own career at Flinders University and the University of South Australia, where she
became an Associate Professor. She produced a variety of publications dealing with aspects of Vietnamese cultural
history and the Vietnamese in Australia. My-Van also was appointed to several government advisory bodies,
including the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission and the National Multicultural
Advisory Council and she served as a member of the board of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). She revisited
Darwin frequently to see members of her family and old friends.
Charming, vivacious, attractive and yet very determined, My-Van made a notable contribution to Darwin that
was widely recognised. There were quite frequent stories about her in the Northern Territory media. In 1986,
she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her services to Asian-Australian relations. One of
Australia’s best known authors, Thomas Keneally, in his 1983 book on the Northern Territory, Outback, devoted a
chapter to her and the story she told of the first Vietnamese boat people to discover Australia from the sea. A most
striking photograph in the lavishly illustrated book is of her dressed in traditional Vietnamese style standing with
hands together and with hair blowing in the wind on the edge of the Timor Sea, the stretch of water crossed by so
many of her fellow compatriots.
T Keneally, Outback, 1983; J Singh (ed), Austral–Asian Who’s Who, 1992–1993, 1992; T Minh & Minh Hanh (eds), The Pride of the Vietnamese,
1995; M-V Tran, personal information to author, 1995.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 3.
TUCKER, PATRICK (PATTY, PADDY) (1896–1979), bush worker, was born on Owen Springs Station in
1896 (although some records suggest 1894). His mother, Sharnath, was an Aranda woman of that country, which
was first taken up as a cattle property in 1872. She had two sons, Jacky (c1890–1906) and Paddy, by the same
stockman, who gave them the name Tucker.
Paddy’s earliest recollections were of his mother hiding away in the bush whenever any stranger appeared, as
the law then demanded that children of mixed descent should be taken away from their traditional surroundings to
a foster home, and of his older brother, Jacky, carrying him about ‘piggy back’. Jacky was his constant companion
and greatest mate, and Paddy greatly missed him when he obtained work as a stockman on the lower Finke River,
and was devastated when he and a young white stockman perished in 1906.
At the age of about 10 years, to prevent him being taken away by a policeman, his mother allowed him to be
taken away by a local area stockman who wished to train the lad as a stockman. It transpired, in fact, that he wanted
a boy to help him duff cattle from Glen Helen Station: Paddy spent the next four years of his life learning both
regular stock work and all there was to know about cattle duffing.
In 1910, the early learning period long over, he joined a droving plant as horse tailer. They rode to the Ord River
Station, on the Western Australia and Northern Territory border close to 1 000 kilometres north west of the Alice.
From here, the intended route was southeast to and across the Barkly Tableland to Camooweal, Queensland, then
to Birdsville, also in Queensland, and down the Birdsville Track to Adelaide. The droving went well at first, with
Halley’s Comet brilliant overhead each night as they crossed the Tableland.
However, two problems arose, the first being between Paddy and the drovers’ cook. The latter, for reasons
unknown to Paddy, took a strong dislike to him—Paddy’s food, after a long day’s work, was always cold and
scrappy, and the cook was always abusive about him being a ‘half caste’. Paddy survived over 1 000 kilometres
of insults, but one day dwelt on the results and, as he came off the droving at the end of the day, rode full gallop
into the camp. Everyone present knew, by his yelling and his actions, that he and the cook were going to have it
out. Paddy was tall, lean and hard for a lad, and in a rage to boot. He found that he could fight and, after giving the
cook a hiding with his fists, dragged him by the hair to the cook’s waggon, took some hobble chains hanging there,
and thrashed him with them too. ‘Now’, he said, ‘I’m a half caste allright, and I’ve thrashed you like a white man,
and I’ve thrashed you like a blackfellow. From now on I want the same as everyone else.’ The boss drover and all
the other stockmen had known all along that Paddy must react at some time, and the cook grudgingly accepted
that he had been ‘flogged fair’: from then on Paddy had the same meals as the others, and was acknowledged as a
very able fighter.
A significant event in between this problem and the next was Paddy’s discovery of an old school primer, found
on the ground blowing in the wind; he picked it up, and practiced the letters of the alphabet on his saddle flap.
Another young stockman helped him practice reading jam tin labels. ‘I read that old book all to pieces’, Paddy was
later to recall; it was the difference between remaining ignorant of newspapers and books, and being able to enjoy
them and sign his name.
The second problem occurred when the cattle started dropping from ‘the pleuro’. Circumstances demanded that
the mob be kept moving, yet to keep them moving was to stress them and cause more to fall. ‘We was shooting
them and burning them, shooting them and burning them, every day. It was like shooting our friends.’
When they reached Birdsville, a telegram awaited the boss drover, who had wired ahead about the trouble. Instead
of continuing to Adelaide, they delivered the mob to a property in central southern Queensland. The contractual
arrangements meant that the boss drover received little money—after 18 months on the road. He had to sell all but
his own riding horse and a packhorse to keep faith with the men, and pay them their due, and after finding Paddy
a job in Charleville, Queensland, he rode off penniless. Paddy regarded him, for the rest of his life, as the closest
he had to a father whom he knew and respected—the best of men.
Paddy made friends with a few young white men in Charleville, and when they urged him to go with them
to coastal Queensland, he joined their group. For a season, he cut cane, but then returned to Charleville. Here he