Advertisement

Humility is a star quality

Dozens of children from an Aboriginal community in Darwin’s suburbs have had a taste of stardom after appearing in the latest Jessica Mauboy film clip.

Mauboy’s clip The Day Before I Met You was released on Friday and it thrusts Darwin’s Bagot community into the spotlight.

Australia’s Eurovision dream comes true
· Rinehart sends skinny pic to get back at ‘tacky’ show
· House prices: what you can afford to buy overseas

Bagot is a place sometimes associated with high levels of poverty and crime, but the film clip shows people from the community having fun, dancing in the streets and playing sport.

“I was happy because she grew up in Darwin, and she is kind of famous,” said 14-year-old Laura Jentian, who featured in the clip.

Laura said too many people thought Bagot was a bad place to live.

“They are all wrong. They need to see Bagot inside properly,” she said.

Karita White was also in the film clip and said he had fun making it.

“She [Mauboy] was pretty nice to us,” she said.

“We had to clap and walk around with her.”

Bagot was formed in 1938 when the Government needed to move people out of the notorious Kahlin Compound, which housed Aboriginal children who were part of the Stolen Generations.

The community is close to the heart of Darwin and has been a political football for years, with the NT’s Lands and Planning Minister Dave Tollner once saying the area should be “normalised” so that anyone can buy a home there.

Bagot Community Council chair Helen Fejo-Frith said the filming was exciting and for children that sometimes lacked pride in their community, it was inspirational.

“With Jessica being in here it made them feel a lot better and really I think that a lot of the kids have been saying to me ‘does Jessica come from here?’ And I was saying yes, she is from Darwin,” Ms Fejo-Frith said.

Mauboy, 25, was born and raised in Darwin, the daughter of an Aboriginal mother from Queensland and an Indonesian father.

She won two ARIA awards and in 2012 appeared in The Sapphires, a film about a group of singers that travelled to Vietnam in 1968 to perform for soldiers.

Stay informed, daily
A FREE subscription to The New Daily arrives every morning and evening.
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians. Read our editorial charter
Copyright © 2024 The New Daily.
All rights reserved.