Hobart Mercury - October 2, 1999
Author: Steven Dally

Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell has fought some tough battles in his time, but none more difficult than the fight for his health.

MICHAEL Mansell has taken on the Queen, prime ministers, and both white and black establishments without fear for more than 25 years.

But one sentence from a surgeon two years ago rocked him to the core. A non-smoker and former footballer who carried his fitness regime into his 40s, Mansell had dismissed the X-rays showing a spot on his lung.

Even contracting chronic fatigue syndrome four years before hadn't shaken his faith in himself. ``I was always unhealthy as a kid. We used to go days without food, we were poor and we had every disease that poor people have, but I am still alive,'' he said.

The surgeon's request for an urgent operation that day was a shock - ``I thought `oh f . . .' '' - but the emergency of the situation prevented any time to dwell on the reality of the situation.

That was until a pre-surgery briefing just minutes before going under the knife.

``In comes the surgeon and he said, `Look, before we operate, I have to tell you that if this cancer has spread, there is a 50% chance you will live for another five years,' '' he said. ``I said `hang on here a minute, are you telling me that I'll be dead in five years? I've got chronic fatigue, but I'm not feeling too bad.'

``I told him `you won't need the anaesthetic, I'll faint here in a minute' - that's when it started coming home to me.''

The spot was cancer, malignant cancer, in Mansell's terms ``a real goer'', and part of his lung was removed, but it hadn't spread. ``That was November '97 and they said if it is going to reoccur it will be back in six months or 12 months or two years.''

So far the cancer has shown no sign of reappearing, and his next checkup is in May.

Like other sufferers of chronic fatigue, Mansell endures the endless battle against fatigue, buckets of vitamins, and a search for something that will turn around the condition, since contracting the disease during native title negotiations in 1993.

``Unlike [Brisbane Lions footballer and prominent fellow sufferer] Alistair Lynch, I wasn't in the position of not being able to get out of bed, but I don't think I have improved to where I could get out and play a game of football either.''

The twin experiences are part of the reason Mansell, now 48 and a grandfather of three, has been less visible and he says it has changed some of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre legal manager's workaholic attitudes.

``When he gave me the statistics they give to everybody, I died there and then. I had given up life; I didn't realise how serious this stuff is: I would never get cancer; once you get cancer it spreads, so it looks like I'm gone. It makes you appreciate life. Instead of delaying the things you would really like to do, personally go and do them - so I did.''

The priority for Mansell, once the effects of the massive incursion into his chest had been overcome, was to head back to the islands of the Furneaux Group on his beloved 15-metre fishing boat, the Dorothy Star.

``As soon as I was able to, I jumped on the boat and I thought: `If I'm going to die of this cancer, I am going to get over to those islands, find where those mutton-bird sheds were on Chapell Island that mum talks about back around the turn of the century.

`` `I am going to get back to Badger and I will get back to Clarke.' I went over on the boat and spent a month and loved it.''

Mansell's parents moved from the islands to ``the mainland'' before he was born, in the face of a government relocation policy, and later through a succession of small northern towns.

But there were the stories of the islands from his parents and family friends and trips back across Banks Strait.

A self-described ``cheeky little bastard'', Mansell left school at 15, but it wasn't until the mid-'70s that the political fight against Aboriginal injustice gripped him.

He was passionate, could talk and wasn't afraid to say what he felt, even if it meant upsetting people, particularly after he returned to school, gaining a law degree.

The Michael Mansell , Tasmanian Aboriginal activist, known to most Australians, as opposed to Mick known by the Aboriginal community, became the community's most visible and controversial activist.

Mansell twice attempted to present Queen Elizabeth with petitions, the first at Wrest Point in 1977, then again in Canberra in 1988.

He stood for the Senate in 1987, attacked Nelson Mandela for not supporting the Aboriginal cause - but most famous was his Libyan connection: that country was then a staging base for international terrorism.

Mansell admits now that the biggest stories were as a result of him seizing an opportunity which presented itself, usually in the form of a media hungry for another colourful Mansell spray.

The Libyan visit came about simply because he was the only Aboriginal activist with a valid passport to travel at short notice. While his critics conjured up pictures of Mansell and Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi devising plans for a wave of Aboriginal terrorism, he said the public row served to push the black deaths in custody issue.

Indeed, the two figures never met.

``I was in a room with 200 other people and he gave a 15- minute speech, that was it,'' Mansell laughed.

``I was good at coming up with ideas, but not carrying them through. I'm disorganised and most things I do, I am flying by the seat of my pants.''

In yet another yarn poking fun at his own foibles, Mansell told of getting lost in Bass Strait when his desire to buy and bring back from the mainland the Dorothy Star overrode any concerns about a lack of offshore navigational skills, particularly those involving compass and chart reading.

Late in the day, a single mutton-bird, which he knew would be heading back to the nest, pointed the way to King Island.

Indeed, there was always a wry humour - which very few people saw - about Mansell's media adventures, even though he was very serious about the underlying message.

He doesn't regret any of them, but he believes he made mistakes, particularly in regard to conservative Tasmanian politics, which started taking Aboriginal issues seriously in the early '90s.

``I was probably mistaken in not talking to the politicians earlier to try to get across what we meant, rather than expecting them to understand what we meant,'' he said.

``When the opportunity came up there was a big gap I had to fix quickly.''

While his health has played a part in the quietening of Michael Mansell , the change in Tasmanian politics has meant there is rarely the need for the confrontational style of the '80s, and there are now more Aboriginals leading the debate, running the meetings and pushing the agenda.

It is a fact he greatly enjoys, but just don't suggest he has mellowed. Those famous blue eyes, which were used as a means by both black and white to dismiss his statements out of hand, still flash with the fire of the angry young man of the '70s and '80s.