By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
Father John Luemmen was thrust into the spotlight this year when Australian Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush depicted him in the latest Australian film Bran Nue Dae, but local Aborigines have long known about the kindly German Pallottine missionary.
It all started with a lightning-quick 15-year-old Aboriginal Australian Rules footballer from the remote town of Mount Magnet called Harold Little.
In 1956, Fr John was sent to Rossmoyne in Perth’s southern suburbs to start a school for boys from their mission house in Tardun, located in the remote bush of the Diocese of Geraldton in north-west Western Australia.
He started the school with one student: Harold, a wingman for the Perth Demons in the West Australian Football League who played with legendary Barry Cable, three-time winner of the Sandover Medal, the competition’s award for best and fairest player over the season.
“Boys studying in Tardun often got the basic ‘mission education’, but Harold wanted to study more,” Father John told The Record. “So I helped organise an apprenticeship for him and taught him all the academic subjects. He was a good carpenter.”
With Harold successfully completing his Year 10 certificate and going on to become a cabinet maker, and the success of Joseph Roe and Philip Albert from Broome in WA’s far north the following year, applications started flooding in from everywhere.
By 1961, Fr John was accepting girls into the school and, as numbers swelled, more land was acquired and buildings constructed. Eventually, the Pallottine Mission Centre in Rossmoyne accommodated 80 Aboriginal boys and girls in six separate houses. He eventually housed 100 students a year. Finance for buildings, equipment, furniture, and vehicles was needed, so Fr John sourced income from the Native Welfare Department, the WA Lotteries’ Commission and the Pallottine Community – mostly from “Misereor”, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Germany.
Soon he had expanded the 10-acre lot to 25 acres, including four major buildings. Much of the land has today been bought out by Southern Cross Homes for aged care, but one building still stands – the one he moved into last year for retired Pallottines.
It became a regular Saturday afternoon event for several busloads of students to travel around Perth to watch Harold play for the Demons. They got free entry through a deal with the WAFL.
On Australia Day this year, 26 January, Fr John was presented with an Active Citizenship Award by the Canning City Council for his extensive service to Aboriginal education and welfare in Rossmoyne, the expansion of primary school education in Riverton and Willetton and his work with the aged in the Riverton parish.
Upon being ordained in 1950, he was sent to Tardun in the remote bush of the Geraldton diocese as a missionary priest, caring for boys at a boarding school and farm. His autobiography Led by the Spirit details his experiences there.
Upon arriving at Rossmoyne, he helped students reach Year 12 and obtain apprenticeships and work experience while allowing them to stay at the Pallottine centre.
There, he had a strong Aboriginal collaborator in Harold’s sister Edith Little, after whom one of the main buildings he built was named. He still speaks highly of her today.
“She was a great help,” he told The Record.
Fr Luemmen, now aged 90, was depicted by Geoffrey Rush – who won an Oscar for his portrayal of genius pianist David Helfgott in 1996 – in the 2010 musical, big-screen adaptation of the stage musical written by Broome’s Jimmy Chi called Bran Nue Dae, which opened around Australia on 14 January.
Though his name was changed to Fr Benedictus in the movie and play, Fr John was invited to attend the premiere of the stage production in Perth in the 1990s.
The movie has Rush using a wooden plank to spank the boys with the words “Thou shalt not steal” on it, and depicts his character as authoritarian.
But Harold Little’s wife Cecelia, who was in the first group of girls to be enrolled at the Rossmoyne mission in 1961, told The Record that while Fr John was strict, he was more a mentor to boys and girls alike, and they are still friends to this day.
Harold and Cecelia still live around the corner from the original Rossmoyne mission.
Fr John was prolific in his productivity as parish priest at Our Lady Queen of Apostles parish in Riverton from 1981, starting a second stream at its adjacent primary school and responsible for building Orana Primary School.
Riverton parishioner Bill Smith, in submitting information for Fr John to be nominated for the Australia Day award, said of Fr John: “As parish priest, he actively promoted the participation of the laity in the parish in accordance with the Second Vatican Council and the objectives of the Pallottine founder, St Vincent Pallotti.”