Fillis Circus

Fillis Circus is a South African circus whose tour of Australia’s east coast becomes a brief but formative chapter in Yadaka’s childhood. The company gives him work and a place among its performers, but its departure leaves him destitute in Melbourne, beginning a chain of events that separates him from the circus and places him in colonial institutions.

A boy taken into the circus

At about twelve, Yadaka runs away from a violent employer who has accused him of stealing gold. He stows away aboard a ship that has been in port at Cook Town for more than a week, drawn by its unfamiliar animals. He falls asleep on hay and wakes at sea. The ship carries him into a life with Fillis Circus, far from his home country, Guugu Yimithirr.

Touring and abandonment

Yadaka later recalls that he toured Australia’s east coast with the company for three years. He says he was good with the children who came to watch and describes calming a bear during rough seas. The circus’s route began in the north, in his country, but the company eventually left him in Melbourne. His account presents the tour as both a period of unusual experience and a fragile refuge: when it ends, the young Yadaka is without support in a city far from home.

Consequences in Yadaka’s life

After the circus leaves him, Yadaka is arrested for being destitute and jailed. He is eventually collected from Pentridge Prison by Father Daniel Matthews, who offers him a place in a household and teaches him to read and write. Yet that care does not erase Yadaka’s longing to return to his mother’s country and clan. The circus is thus an important link in his life between escape from an abusive employer and later attempts to find a way home; its departure leaves him exposed to a system that treats his poverty as grounds for imprisonment.