Two weeks before the outbreak of WWII, Con Colleano, the 'Wizard of the wire', was perched on a tightrope, suspended high above his audience.
Watching on was the man who would imminently spark that conflict, German Chancellor and dictator Adolf Hitler.
As Con performed his famous move, a forward somersault on the taut wire, the Fuhrer applauded his daring, a fan along with the rest of the crowd.
But perhaps the acrobat's more daring move was performing in Nazi Germany while hiding his family's Aboriginal heritage.
The talents and secrets of the Colleano family - a world famous Aboriginal circus troupe from the early 20th Century - are explored in a new documentary by Yaegl filmmaker Pauline Clague.
‘The Colleano Heart’, backed by decades of research and First Nations oral histories, is the result of a cross-continental effort to bring an Aboriginal story of resilience and survival to light.
Bundjulung heroes
Julia Sullivan nee Robinson. She and her family hid their Bundjulung heritage at a time when revealing it posed risks.
The couple's 10 children, along with a cousin, created a circus troupe and adopted the Italian-sound last name Colleano.
They were able to travel and tour across several Australian states, finding huge success - eventually leaving to tour in the UK, Europe and the United States.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, the troupe were performing globally including a stint with the Ringling Brothers Circus.
Along with the notorious German dictator, wizard of the wire Con Colleano also counted Charlie Chaplin and Benito Mussolini as fans.
Con Colleano leaving the Big Top. His antics atop the highwire won him fans around the world, including Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler.
“It's an unknown side of Australian history of that period, between massacres and the Aboriginal Protection Board really coming down and creating the Stolen Generation, when our communities hid.”
The filmmaker believes that this film returns a sense of “agency” to the family story, utilising footage that provides insight into the family’s life and challenge existing narratives about Aboriginal people in the 20th century.
“We were really lucky that Con Colleano, one of the sons, brought a camera in 1925 and just started documenting the family,” she says.
“We don't see [Aboriginal] families with joy … to be able to let people into the joy of a family swimming or dancing, we don't see that stuff of Indigenous Australia in that period. You know, to be able to show footage of our mob thriving, not just surviving in the 1920s and 30s.”
More personally for Clague, the Colleanos were not just an interesting Aboriginal story - they are embedded in her family oral history.
Identifying variously as Arab or Spanish, the Colleanos' skills and worldwide fame couldn't be rightly celebrated as Blak excellence until now.
Over time, she would ask her parents about these relations and started researching through scrapbooking old newspapers.
As an adult, Clague was dissatisfied at the material available on the Colleanos and how it lacked the insight from the family oral history.
She decided to formally create a database of newspapers and photographs, which she says is nearing 4000 items.
She also worked with Deb Hescott, a Gamilaraay family historian and Colleano family relative.
The harsh necessities of the time made research difficult.
“They were hiding those secrets. They pretended they were Spanish for a long period of time, they pretended they were Arab for a long period of time,” she explains.
"So this shape shifting that they were doing, [I] had to track that in some shape or form, and then look between the lines
“The important thing is that, the oral history, Mum had never swung from that. She had told me the story, I'd kept it in my head, I'd reverberate it every time I could think of it, and it made me dig deeper and look at the research.”
During the course of the documentary, Clague connects with the Colleano’s American descendants - who were unaware of their Indigenous heritage, but one of whom is an oral history holder of the family, providing lived experience of these family figures.
‘The Colleano Heart’ directly explores truth-telling for the Colleanos and their descendants, but also shines a light on the stories that have yet to be told to Australian audiences.
Pauline says this project has, “made me realise that there are stories that we still haven't told in this country that we really need to.
"Whether you're from the Stolen Generation or the hidden generation or the invisible components, these shapes of who we are are a part of what informs us and our identity now.
“How do we become stronger as a community, if we're not looking at all of it and saying 'all of it makes us stronger'?
"Because at the end, we are still here.”
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