LEARNING IN Community
The NOW course – the Network of Older Women
The NOW course for Aboriginal women ran in western Sydney in 1984. NOW stood for Network of Older Women. Activist, linguist and Tranby teacher Terry Widders remembered this course as the most exciting example of community education he was involved in. There were other Tranby courses like it in country areas but this example is important because it shows the interest Tranby had in thinking about the many Aboriginal people who lived in the city as communities, as well as offering courses for those in the bush.
Terry Widders: And the thing I remember coming up in a practical kind of way was the women’s group called NOW in western Sydney, with Robyn Williams. That developed through 1984, it was a lot about reflections on life experience for many of the people in it, so it was a pretty open weave set of possibilities.
Tranby became involved in this program because Robyn Williams – who lived out near Liverpool and was one of the few women who had been a Builders Labourer – had known Kevin when he was the Aboriginal organiser in the BLF.
So she was confident that he actually would listen to what they wanted and respond seriously to the women’s request for a course that suited them.
Judy Chester (born in Wellington but in 1984 living in Liverpool with three teenaged children) was a student when the NOW program got started. She passed away in 2010, but she had talked about the NOW course over the years before, recording this:
Our course got going at Liverpool because Robyn Williams was doing the outreach programs for TAFE back then and she said, ‘Well what do you girls want?’ And we all said, ‘Well we just want a taste of education!’ We’d all been locked up with our kids for years, our self-esteem was down around our bootlaces!
And we had to fight tooth and nail with the AECG over that because they said it wasn’t accredited! But we got it! It was called the Aboriginal Women’s ‘NOW’ program, we were the pilot course. And now the NOW program is still going, it’s for migrant women and for other women... it’s just wonderful!
Robyn Williams, c.1992, teaching students about country on Dharawal land on the Georges River. Photograph Heather Goodall
Terry Widders (right) with Kevin Cook and Tranby student Roger Mackay at the 1982 protest against racism in public schools, outside the NSW Department of Education. Photograph: Brian Doolan
Judy Chester and her sister, Janny Ely (who passed away in 2018), around 1984 when both were participants in the NOW course. Courtesy: Judy Chester family collection
Judy Chester with daughter Jannette and son Peter. Courtesy: Judy Chester family collection
Kevin Cook remembered that Robyn had approached Tranby to build a course that would have be interesting for the women who would come along. Terry taught Aboriginal Studies and Kevin taught Co-operative Studies, while Brian Doolan and Chris Milne taught the Skills components of literacy and numeracy. As well as their formal classes, the women in NOW read and reviewed books for Blackbooks too, giving Aboriginal perspectives for Blackbooks’ catalogues. The NOW course aimed at catering for the needs of all women, of whatever age and pre-existing knowledge, which meant the classes reflected the strong role of older women in families and local Aboriginal communities.
All of the women built their confidence and took on leadership roles: some went to University and completed degrees, while others took up management roles in community organisations or unions and became confident spokespeople advocating for Indigenous people’s rights. Judy Chester was one example, as an outspoken Aboriginal member of the Public Sector Association, working in research and community organising. She took active roles in the campaign for Aboriginal Land Rights, as one of the founders of the Gandangara Land Council and in protesting at the dumping of nuclear waste by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission at Lucas Heights.
Judy Chester with family and community in the protest at the dumping of nuclear waste at Lucas Heights. Courtesy: Judy Chester family collection