Patrick Mills joined the Navy in 1966 and was quite shocked and had a real awakening to the wider world and his place in it as a young Torres Strait Islander man and non-citizen in pre-1967 referendum Australia. The American civil rights movement at the time and its fight against racism had a huge impact on Patrick – in particular he remembers the killing of Martin Luther King and the riots in America, along with the power and inspiration of heroic figures such as Mohammed Ali. Training in the Navy was hard, Patrick talks about being thrown in the deep end and having to just survive and make it through. Patrick volunteered to serve on ships supplying the Australian forces in Vietnam, and was overlooked for a citation for this service that all his Navy mates doing the same job received, and he was very bitter about this. Some 20 years later Patrick did receive the medals he was entitled to for his service in Vietnam but again it did not sit right with him that it took so long to be recognised in this way. Patrick also talks about the service of his father and that whole generation of Torres Strait Islander men who left their homes to fight for Australia against the Japanese in World War 2 and the women, including his mother, who were left behind to survive on their islands virtually defenceless.

• Watch Patrick’s interview at the Cairns Yarn Up;
• Return to the Cairns Yarn Up page.