It was Sunday evening and Cheree Toka, then 26, was “freaking out”.
The next morning, Toka was due on the ABC Breakfast couch to explain to the nation why she was submerging the NSW government in hot water with her campaign to fly the Aboriginal flag permanently atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The idea was born in a car after a dinner out.
“I looked up as we were driving over the bridge and saw the Aboriginal flag wasn’t there – just the NSW and Australian flags,” Toka tells Guardian Australia five years later. “I remember getting riled and saying to my friends ‘this country is so messed up sometimes’.”
So the young Kamilaroi woman started researching. She discovered the Aboriginal flag was flown atop the world-famous bridge just 19 days a year.
“That didn’t sit well with me, so I started a Change.org petition.”
That was in January 2017 and the campaign found traction almost immediately.
Suddenly journalists wanted to know this young Aboriginal woman who was lighting up social media.
National television, though, was a dizzying step up.
“I’m almost reluctant to admit this, but I hadn’t even voted at that point in my life,” Toka recalls.
“I’d just never delved into what the political parties stood for. I really had no idea!
“I was panicking, and very nervous. Public speaking had never been my thing.”
Anxious and overwhelmed, Toka reluctantly cancelled the ABC interview.
“It was frustrating because I expected so much more from myself,” she says.
“I didn’t realise then that people just wanted to hear my passion for this issue.”
Finding strength in adversity
Toka’s experience is a hallmark of our digital age, where everyday people can be empowered to start all manner of campaigns. Some even manage to go “viral”. But change rarely comes easily, and advocates can find themselves thrust into the spotlight before they’re ready to handle it.
If she was surprised by the campaign’s initial popularity, she was even more surprised by the battle that was to come.
“I thought it was such an easy ask,” she says. “I had no idea it’d take five years of relentless campaigning.”
Ironically, it was another media interview that steeled Toka for the fight ahead.
It was February 2018 and she’d just finished doing a photo call with the then NSW Labor leader Luke Foley, who had announced his party’s support for her campaign.
What should have been a day to celebrate quickly became anything but when Foley faced then 2GB radio host Alan Jones.
The conservative firebrand excoriated Foley for pledging to fly the Aboriginal flag permanently atop the bridge.
“That is the most divisive thing I’ve heard from a political leader of any kind. I’m sorry, you’ve lost the electorate and you’ve lost me,’’ Jones said.
He wasn’t finished there, telling Foley he had no hope of winning the state election the following year. “They will thrash you Luke, you’re gone.”
What Jones couldn’t know was that his opprobrium was a tipping point for Toka, providing the motivation to keep fighting.
“I didn’t care what Alan Jones had to say,” Toka says. “He doesn’t support or represent me or my people.
“Despite the backlash, racism and setbacks, this man hadn’t affected me, as earlier criticism had. That’s when I knew – I will absolutely see this through.”
From that point on, when faced with self doubt, Toka listened to three things: “My gut, my heart, and my friends who said ‘you have fire in your belly – now let it blaze!”.
Scaling a mountain, one step at a time
Speak to Toka now and there’s a sense she’s become – not cynical but shrewd. “I was naive,” she says of her early years of campaigning.
She heard many reasons why the flag couldn’t be flown permanently: first it was flag protocol. Then it was needing to prove there was community support. Then it was the problem of erecting new poles. Then it was the cost of doing that.
“At first I complied with everything they asked,” Toka says. She amassed 177,000 signatures on her Change.org petition. She sought publicity by doing the BridgeClimb “even though I’m terrified of heights”. She collected 10,000 paper signatures, which compelled a NSW parliamentary debate. She faced her reluctance of speaking to media and politicians. She even started a GoFundMe to raise tens of thousands of dollars towards the quoted $300,000 cost of erecting new flagpoles.
She now realises what was happening. “Excuses,” she says. “They just wanted me to shut up and go away. As I grew in confidence and sharpened my communication skills, that was never going to happen.”
On the weekend of 5 February, the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, promised to fly the flag permanently on the bridge within six months to a year.
Brilliant and overdue news that the Aboriginal Flag will fly year round on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Congrats to @Chereetoka, an incredible activist and Grayndler local, who led the 5 year campaign to get this done. pic.twitter.com/1HGmerAMWF
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 5, 2022
The announcement has left Toka feeling cautiously elated. She’s keen to meet with Perrottet after his predecessor as premier, Gladys Berejiklian, consistently ignored her campaign.
“I’d love to sit opposite Perrottet, hear him commit to a six-month deadline,” she says. “I also want to hear how it’ll be done; it needs to be done respectfully and ceremoniously, and with Indigenous people at the heart.”
Making friends is the path to change
Toka, now 31, admits she’s matured a lot while pursuing her campaign.
She’s now savvy about making change, something she’d love to do more of in the future, particularly with Indigenous education in schools.
When asked what she’s learned along the way, Toka says change doesn’t happen overnight.
“You have to have patience. And you have to make friends, even when you don’t want to.”
This.
— Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) February 8, 2022
Two things.
Very cool.
About time. https://t.co/oTE9Pb2JVY
The patience extends to her own political ambitions, having been invited to put her name forward for a spot on Labor’s ticket at the Inner West council elections, which she politely declined.
“I’m not ready yet,” she says. “Give it a few years.”
So how will she feel as that Aboriginal flag finally ascends the pole to take its permanent place atop one of Australia’s most famous landmarks?
“I’m going to feel like we did it. I helped make that happen. I’m going to feel a sense of belonging and power,” she says.
“And I’ll feel equal to non-Indigenous people.”
