Cultural Champion

At school, the Thompson kids were fine athletes – the stars of the sports and swimming carnivals – and Suzanne showed an early aptitude for art. She undertook a hairdressing apprenticeship straight out of school, coincidentally in the same building where she now has an art gallery. Suzanne then went to Rockhampton to do a secretarial course at TAFE then moved to Moranbah and Mackay where, by the age of 19, she was managing a salon. Her dreams of going to London to further training with Vidal Sassoon ended when she became pregnant with son Joaben at the age of 21. 

But Suzanne turned herself to parenting with her signature dedication to the task, backed by the strong family values her parents had instilled in their children. By the time she turned 23, she’d moved to Brisbane, where she found she could supplement her earnings by selling her paintings through a gallery. “Art and hairdressing have always been my backstops,” she says. “People always need haircuts and my storytelling through painting always seems to find an audience.”

Suzanne became a fearless advocate for Indigenous justice when, at 26, she was evicted from her Brisbane rental accommodation while on holidays, because her landlord – who had never met her – discovered she was Indigenous. “They threw all my furniture out on the street,” she recalls. “Something inside me just flipped and I decided I was going to do everything in my power to make sure this sort of thing never happened to me or my people again.” She then began what would become 3 decades of working for government and community organisations as a pioneer for social and economic empowerment.

A lifetime of casual racism, from rarely being invited to sleepovers as a child to being refused service in a bar as a young adult, coalesced into steely resolve as Suzanne worked her way through roles as a government youth policy advisor, a community development worker for Brisbane City Council and an Indigenous business readiness officer. Finally, she set up her own art and craft business on the Sunshine Coast. Along the way, she had a second son, Ezekial, who is now a builder and cabinet maker in Barcaldine, with impressive side hustles as a footballer and trad step dancer – a fusion of Indigenous dance and hip hop. She’s equally proud of Joaben’s achievements and has a tear in her eye when she talks about his time in the Australian Defence Force and tour of Afghanistan. Her eyes light up again as she talks about his determination to pave a future for his family with a successful B&B near Brisbane. She met her husband, architect Graham Ambridge, when she came to Sydney as part of a First Nations creative event for the 2000 Olympics.

“We had a good life on the coast,” she says. “But one night about a decade ago, I had a dream and all my old people lifted me up and carried me out here. The old people were telling me, ‘You’re the one, you’ve got to go home now and be the matriarch’. That was Monday, and by Friday I had my house on the market and moved back to Barcaldine. Every now and then this tawny frogmouth comes and sits on the verandah, and I know that it’s Dad checking up on me.”

David Thompson would have every reason to be proud of what his daughter has achieved since coming back to Queensland’s Central West. As the managing director of YACHATDAC, Suzanne is steering a land regeneration program that will turn Turraburra into a showcase for arid land zone management in a changing climate. For the first time in 140 years, there are no cattle around the wetlands, as the agisted stock have been moved away. There’s also been an intensive clearing project to remove sticks and silt from the waterholes, which means that wildlife, including koalas, are returning.

To walk on country with Suzanne is to see the landscape as full of edible and pharmaceutical plants. There’s samphire on the claypan – good in salads – bush lolly from the sap of the gidgee, ruby saltbush, which has a high concentration of vitamin C and is good for headaches, native banana (fairy floss on the outside, snow pea inside), wild cucumber and native lemongrass. “Spinifex contains a resin that’s stronger than Superglue,” she says. “The old people used to make string from the fibres of the black wattle, and it could become a rival to bamboo or hemp … Scientists are testing a lot of Australian gums and resins for use as emulsifiers. Imagine if these gidgee trees were found to be a useful source. That could make native binding agents into a multi-million-dollar industry.” 

Through YACHATDAC, Suzanne is working with scientists from James Cook, Griffith and Queensland universities to explore the potential for growing various bush foods commercially. “It presents a huge alternative for landholders to stop focusing on livestock and pulling scrub,” she says. “It makes so much sense to grow plants that are already adapted to this environment.”

Long-time Barcaldine resident, former pastoralist and botanical artist Jenny Mace describes Suzanne’s “brilliance” as her dedication to preserving her people’s past while at the same time using this knowledge to deal with contemporary challenges. “Her people have been adapting in this wide brown land since time immemorial,” she says. “We must adapt to what lies ahead if we are to intelligently cope with climate change, changing habitats and weather patterns. We have to be like wattles. Turn our human leaves, if you like, into flattened stems, plant our seeds in a different soil, high up the hill where it is cooler.”

In her ‘spare’ time, Suzanne chairs the Australian Native Food and Botanicals national body, which is working to secure Indigenous interests in this rapidly expanding market. She is also a First Nations advisor to the Tourism and Events Queensland board, interim secretary for the newly formed Queensland First Nations Tourism Council and contributes to the Central Western Queensland ministerial round table. She’s a member of Landcare Australia’s First Nations working group and is a First Nations integrity member of the Federal Government’s First Nations Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee.

Suzanne is the first to admit her many commitments are distractions from her main game, which is to see Turraburra established as a centre for knowledge sharing, truth-telling and learning about Indigenous culture through hosting visitors. Plans for the property include setting up sites with glamping tents and high-end accommodation in a new homestead for visitors, school and corporate groups and researchers, plus performance spaces and a $200 million interpretive centre.

Turraburra’s story wall is the jewel in the crown of the visitor experience. Set in an escarpment that runs through the station, it stretches along almost 200m of overhanging rock that protects an extraordinary gallery of ochre hand, foot and animal paintings, etchings and peckings illustrating the Milky Way and the legend of the Seven Sisters, which is a creation story common to many First Nations people.

There’s a catch in Suzanne’s voice as she points out specific men’s and women’s sites and explains their significance. It’s early days for researching and dating this amazing repository and she says she’s grateful for the help of senior NT lore men, Uncle Bruce Williams and Uncle Vincent Forrester, who are guiding the interpretation of the works. “We used to have to ask permission to come here on our country,” she says. “But everything changed when we got ownership of Turraburra. Yes, the endless scroll of the to-do list is daunting. But I’m not doing it for myself. I just want our stories to be told and empathy to be restored to the conversation. I’m doing it for all our grandchildren.”