The Aboriginal use of the term 'uncle' implies many things and often not a biological relationship.
It certainly designates seniority and a kind of deference, but in the case of the late Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Yorta Yorta elder and veteran actor Uncle Jack Charles, it also implies deep respect.
I revered him for the mere fact of his life, and the way he embodied tenacity and the will to survive.
I always called him Uncle, from the time I first met him after I moved to Melbourne in 2009.
I would often see him on a highly visible corner on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, one of his old haunts while living rough after heroin addiction gripped him and blighted a promising acting career.
At that time, I was the presenter of Awaye!, the Indigenous art culture program on ABC RN.
Our paths crossed professionally when Uncle was doing publicity for a harrowing but inspiring indie film made about his life, a fly-on-the-wall observational documentary filmed over a seven-year period by director Amiel Courtin-Wilson.
Taking its name from a play by John Romeril in which Uncle performed in 1972, the film 'Bastardy' — rather too closely at times — documented his life as the self-described cat burglar with a "nasty Bre'r Rabbit" (habit) fought to get clean and straighten up — after thirty years of addiction and homelessness punctuated by jail time.
As a blow-in from Sydney, I have to admit that when I sat down to interview him for the first time, I'd never heard of Uncle Jack.
I'd almost certainly seen him on screen — in minor roles on films such as 'The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith' and Tracey Moffatt's art-house triumph 'Bedevil'.
But I'd never heard the gravel and rasp of his extraordinary voice – no doubt deepened by the hard life he had been exposed to when he was cruelly taken from his mother, Blanche, as a baby.
After his removal, Uncle was incarcerated – first, at a home for infants and later, a boys' home in the outer Melbourne suburb of Box Hill administered by the Salvation Army, where he would suffer physical and sexual abuse.
I say incarcerated because Aboriginal children, regardless of age, who were forcibly removed under the assimilationist policies that produced what we know as the Stolen Generations were, as a matter of procedure, charged with a criminal offence – that of being neglected.
Many started life on their own terms years later only to discover they had a criminal record, and no doubt many were criminalised by it.
Uncle was one of those who lobbied the Victorian government to expunge criminal records after a reasonable lapse of time — a legislative change that would enable him to fulfil his dream to provide mentorship in the state's prisons.
After 22 prison terms, it was among the "lost tribes" (as he called them) where he felt his story, of recovery from addiction to becoming a reborn blackfella with a rehabilitated acting career, would resonate most.
That compulsion to mentor and support inmates drove the 2010 autobiographical play 'Jack Charles v The Crown', produced by the Melbourne-based Indigenous theatre company ILBIJERRI under the direction of Rachael Maza, and which toured internationally.
Uncle would rationalise his own criminal activities by saying that when he burgled luxury cars and plush homes in leafy suburbs south of the Yarra he was simply "collecting the rent from stolen land".
Uncle Jack's ruptured childhood in the boys' home and in foster 'care' was cold and loveless.
He told me during an interview he could not recall being physically held or comforted as a child, or of being treated with kindness.
It didn't make sense: how could this deeply optimistic man with a pearlescent smile have experienced such trauma and not be defined or disfigured by it?
Not only that, but he also exceeded the limitations – and the poverty of imagination — imposed on him, and every child removed by the state.
He discovered a natural talent and passion for theatre, only slightly nurtured by Salvationist religious plays at the boys' home.
Soon, he was drawn into the orbit of Melbourne's long-established New Theatre.
He was living at a hostel in Northcote when two members invited him to audition for a production of A Raisin In The Sun by the African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry — a role for which he had to black-up.
He went further than the stage, co-founding the first Aboriginal theatre group Nindethana with Bob Maza (the father of ILBIJERRI artistic director Rachael) at Melbourne's Pram Factory in 1971.
One of Nindethana's productions was Kevin Gilbert's 'The Cherry Pickers', regarded to be the first published Aboriginal play.
He joked to me that he'd "played all manner of other black nationals from across the world, until I was shoved out into the world to go professional… And I tried. I tried auditioning for 'Boney' (the fictional blue-eyed Aboriginal detective in the novels of Arthur Upfield)… I had other opportunities then, you know trying to go for (the musical) 'Hair'. I had a lot of hair — but I had no rhythm!".
As I transcribe this, his wicked laugh fills the air.
Even after the extraordinary career rebirth that followed the success of 'Bastardy', Uncle was always ministering, in his gentle way, to the so-called 'parkies' – the homeless or itinerant Aboriginal population of Melbourne's inner suburbs, and whose number once included not only Uncle Jack himself but another recently deceased and universally loved storyteller, Archie Roach, and his partner in life and music, the late Aunty Ruby Hunter.
On those days I met him by chance in the street in Fitzroy he was always on a mission, often to the point of agitation.
As he spoke in his animated, almost hyperactive way he would tell me about some idea he had to help his "brothers and sisters" in the parkie community to get off the grog or the gear.
He was always fired up about something, but in a good way.
As a gay Aboriginal man, Uncle also gave me a sense of belonging.
There are few blackfellas of his (and my father's) generation that I know who lived their truth so openly, and he did it without fanfare. It just was.
Like myself, ABC broadcaster and host of Speaking Out, Larissa Behrendt interviewed Uncle several times over the years, most recently a few weeks ago.
"Uncle Jack Charles lived a life that so many Blackfellas could relate to," she said.
"He survived the impacts of extraordinary cruel treatment and emerged with a strength of spirit and a voice that spoke truth to power.
"He was able to represent his generation when so many of his peers were unable to.
"He was unapologetic and unrelenting in his advocacy, a fighter to the end. But always with the sense of humour and cheekiness that showed the true spirit of First Nations sovereignty and resilience.
"A true character, he became what true Eldership is about."
Visit ABC iview and the ABC listen app to explore collections celebrating the work of Uncle Jack Charles, including his appearances on Conversations and Speaking Out.
