Screen legend Jack Thompson introduces us to the outback health service which saved his career and his life in this moving episode of Australian Story.
Thompson was about to start filming a new movie in Kakadu National Park when he was diagnosed with kidney failure last year.
Forced to go on dialysis three times a week, it looked like he would have to pull out of his latest film, High Ground, about Indigenous resistance to white settlement in Australia.
There was no dialysis service anywhere near the film shoot location but a chance conversation put him in touch with The Purple Truck, a mobile dialysis service set up by the Pintubi people of the western desert.
“I never thought that end stage renal failure would have anything to do with me.” Jack Thompson.
Purple House CEO Sarah Brown offered to send the truck north to Kakadu so Thompson could have dialysis while shooting the film, which also stars Simon Baker
“It’s an unlikely story, Clancy of the Overflow, having dialysis in Kakadu, in a truck owned and run by Aboriginal people from the desert, yeah that’s pretty unlikely,” Sarah Brown, CEO Purple House.
“We were the only people in the country who could help Jack to do this. It just felt right,” she told the program.
It was a case of ‘good karma’ for the iconic actor, who has spent a lifetime promoting Indigenous causes.
“They have made it possible for my career to continue, when it very well could have come to a full-stop right there,” says Thompson.
The program includes interviews with actors Sigrid Thornton and Michael Caton, film director Bruce Beresford and critic David Stratton.
This is a story about how we should all treat each other , regardless of race , status , education , colour and creed , there is no better example , because this is someone we all admire on various levels….and can get a message to a greater audience than others strive too……its about someone who embraces so many things we don’t see or want to involve ourselves in …….if we all took each other as purely human , not where , what , who , colour or religion or any other badge that we see, or are born with , rather than earned or awarded that makes us in many ways’just’ less than those badges…lHaving a pure empathetic heart , we are no more or above anyone else , then this needs to be indoctrinated into our world society . It is not who , what , where , or why we were born , what we look like , what our heritage is or anything that makes us ‘different’ , we are all the same but simply with a different cover … who we are is on the inside and if we all embraced the philosophy behind a white man being gifted the lifeline offered by an indigineous service , we could all learn so much more than the headlined , political divisionlist messages we are fed on a daily basis . Love one another , but not for race , colour , wealth…but simply because we all have a beating heart and no choice of to who , or to why or what we are born into and the ‘gems’ of our society are those that do not judge a book by its cover but intensely looks to seek what is underneath…a simple philosophy for a much better world…..well done Australian story , Jack Thompson and purple van …. a way to encapsulate why we are here , born naked , no money , but with a heart and mind that can truely better the world…..simply by caring , and by many that have suffered at the hands of white people , or on the other side , have been berated into being sorry for things we had no influence on …as world history was out of our hands…the only thing we have influence on is the now and the future…who knows better or believe they know better than all others….it’s just a different dipping pot…..not a right or reason to put someone into a category…it works both ways , we are all equal , if we treated everyone with that respect , then so many problems would just disappear….. and we could all help address the issues. Faced by us all….the greater por of humanity ! That’s what we all need to fight for , a better world for everyone !