Paul Robeson is presented with an Albert Namatjira painting 11 November 1960

Paul Robeson is presented with an Albert Namatjira painting during a mass
meeting of waterside workers at Sydney Town Hall on 11 November 1960.

One of the last times Robeson spoke and sang publicly in the name of justice and liberty was at the Sydney Opera House. It was 1960 and the Age of Aquarius was dawning. In America, Martin Luther King, Angela Davis and Malcolm X were marching to the front of the black civil-rights campaign.

In Sydney, the Opera House was little more than a construction site. Robeson christened the Opera House by singing on the concrete foundations of what was to become the Concert Hall stage. He sang to an audience of building workers and the site management staff of the construction company, Civil and Civic.

In April this year a production celebrating the life and spirit of Paul Robeson, called Deep Bells Ring, played to packed houses and rave reviews in the Princess Theatre in Brisbane. The production was funded through the Art and Working Life program of the Australia Council.

But it also received financial and material support from the Queensland branch of the Building Workers' Industrial Union and became, in effect, a joint venture between the union and the council's Theatre Board. Following that first success, the national executive of the BWIU has committed $100,000 to mount the production for a return season in Brisbane before taking it on tour to Canberra and Sydney.