Australian Dictionary of Biography

Paul Behrendt, c. 1992

photograph courtesy of his family

Paul Arthur Behrendt (1939–2006), radio operator, oral historian, and academic, was born on 31 October 1939 at Lithgow, New South Wales, eighth of nine children of Henry Behrendt (1903–1979), a journalist from England, and Lavinia Boney/Dawson (c. 1903–1942), a Eualarayi (Yuwaalaraay) woman whose totem, an echidna, or biggibilla, was also Paul’s. Lavinia had been born in 1903 on Wingadee station near Coonamble, New South Wales, but grew up on Dungalear station just outside Walgett. In 1917 she was removed by the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board (APB). While working as a domestic servant under the APB’s control at Wirrabilla station, she had a child whom the APB removed and her family have not been able to identify. She was working as a domestic servant at Parkes when she met Henry. They married on 16 October 1926. On 13 December 1942, seventeen days after the birth of her tenth child, she died of a coronary occlusion at Lithgow.

In 1945 Paul was placed at Burnside, a Presbyterian-run home for orphaned children at Parramatta, with four of his siblings. Leaving Burnside at the age of twelve, he lived with his father and stepmother for two years, whereupon he left school and home and joined the workforce. He lived in impoverished conditions for the next four years before joining the Royal Australian Navy at Sydney on 31 October 1957. Serving at HMAS Cerberus and Harman, and on HMAS Melbourne, among other vessels, he trained as a radio operator. Navy life gave him three meals a day, companionship, a structured life, and a safety net. On 19 October 1963 at St Basil’s Church of England, Artarmon, he married Raema Elizabeth Dickhart (b. 1943), a radio operator in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service. They would have two children, Larissa (b. 1969) and Jason (b. 1970).

Following his discharge on 21 January 1964, Behrendt worked as a flight services officer in the Department of Civil Aviation. Transferred to Cooma in 1968, he was officer in charge of the airport there until 1975 when he was moved, first, to Norfolk Island, then, in 1977, to Mascot. Back in Sydney, he made the decision to switch allegiance from the North Sydney Bears to the Cronulla Sharks Rugby League club, remaining a loyal supporter for the rest of his life.

In 1978 Behrendt suffered a heart attack; he suffered a second one in 1980, resulting in bypass surgery twice within a six-month period. During his convalescence he felt the need to reconnect with his Aboriginal family. He researched APB archives at the New South Wales State Library and contacted the historian Peter Read for guidance. From his mother’s certificate of removal from Dungalear station, he learned that she had had a brother, Sonny Boney (b. c. 1910), and this knowledge enabled him to find his family. He visited Sonny’s son, Tony Boney, at Coonamble. Sonny, who had died three months earlier, had spent his whole life wondering where Lavinia was. Behrendt told the story of finding his family in The Lost Children (1989), and his daughter wrote a fictionalised account in Home (2004).

Spending time with family members helped Behrendt see the importance of oral histories. In the early 1980s he sought funding from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, to record life stories of Aboriginal people in the Walgett area, many of whom had grown up with his mother, such as Ivy Green, Ted Fields, Doc McBride, Reggie Murray, and Fred Reece. These interviews not only contained important life stories but also Eualarayi language words and genealogical information. As Eualarayi became revitalised and family connections were needed to support claims to native title, these interviews gained further significance.

Behrendt was involved in the early work of Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation, formed in 1980 to help Aboriginal adults who had been fostered, adopted, or institutionalised as children. Knowing how to use the archives, he assisted numerous people to reunite with their Aboriginal families over the next two decades. In 1988 he was appointed the first Aboriginal fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). When he commenced teaching Aboriginal studies there the following year, his aim was ‘to inform and educate and put an Aboriginal view of the situation’ (Uniken 1988, 1). One hundred students enrolled in the first year; by 1991, over five hundred were taking the course. In 1991 he established and became the inaugural director of UNSW’s Aboriginal Research and Resource Centre, envisioning it as a ‘centrepiece for indigenous studies around the world’ (Croker 1991, 5). He was also appointed inaugural chair of the Aboriginal Studies Association. The following year he, together with Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), was appointed to a steering committee that worked with the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc. to develop a framework for training teachers of Aboriginal studies. He retired in 2001.

Raema had supported Behrendt through the process of finding his family and identity, but they separated in the early 1990s and divorced in 1996. He had a relationship with Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Sykes (1943–2010) from 1992 to 1997, before meeting and marrying, on 22 May 1999 in Sydney, Dasha Person (b. 1948), a librarian at UNSW. The couple moved to a property they named Echidna Pastures at Arakoon. Behrendt mixed happily and heavily with Dasha’s Czech community. A charismatic man, he loved a party, drinking wine and Irish whiskey, sharing stories, laughing, and singing with friends. Survived by Dasha, Larissa, Jason, and his stepdaughter, Iva Person, he suffered a heart attack and passed away on 30 October 2006 at Arakoon, one day before his sixty-seventh birthday. He was cremated in his Sharks jumper. His collection of oral history recordings, 101 audiocassettes, is held at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.

Jason Behrendt and Larissa Behrendt are Yuwaalaraay. They are Paul Behrendt’s children.