Our Clubs and Groups

Being part of the local commmunity

"We started Kururru (Youth Performing Arts) in Commercial Road, it was a teacher who started it. Everyone came together, all the white kids and black kids. She started it for the teenagers in Port Adelaide to get them involved. We had such good fun."
Josie Agius

Peter Bicknell started the Sunday Club at the Port Adelaide Central Mission in Dale Street with a suite of community development programs to develop leadership and living skills with Aboriginal children and teenagers in the 1970s. The Sunday Club ran for about five years, with over 100 children every week, and created friendships that have endured to this day.
"The Sunday Club was there in Dale St. The churches did that a lot with Blackfellas back then - we went to confirmation lessons on Thursday nights, but it was more fun than religious."
Mary Williams

"A lot of Aboriginal families were around then; the Sunday Club proved it.  It was in the heart of Port Adelaide and people came from everywhere just to attend the events or activities on the day."
Margaret and Kathy Brodie

"I got to travel around Australia with our Aboriginal Netball Carnivals. It was a really good thing, with a lot of good memories. We'd say 'whatever happened at the carnivals stayed at the carnivals', you weren't allowed to come home and tell tales. Even now that we're all old, I joke about it with the boys who went on the trips when I was young. The young ones today are still involved and get a lot out of it."
Josie Agius

"One year when we were very young we wanted to play netball and everything called for a uniform. So I remember mum buying  three metres of the material for each of us and we sat and cut out our own skirts and sewed them by hand. The next day we were out on the netball court."
Margaret and Kathy Brodie

"When Charlie Perkins was Secretary of the Department for Aboriginal Affairs, he asked us what he should do.  Because we didn't have any money or resources, I said 'why don't we have a national netball and football carnival and bring them all into the capital cities and let them have a talk and get together?'.  We invited the coaches of all the Australian Rules teams and only one person came - we asked the VFL to help because one carnival would cost about $80k to run with transport and accommodation. They sent us a cheque for $100 and a football. Charlie told them to take the cheque back because they must need it more than us, and told them what to do with the football. Even in the 1970s and 80s there was that type of resistance. It's different now, there are more avenues for young people to get involved in sport and life."
Vincent Copley