Charles Perkins

Perkins began playing in 1950 with Adelaide team Port Thistle. In 1951, he was selected for a South Australia under 18 representative team. He went on to play for a number of teams in Adelaide including International United (1954–55), Budapest (1956–57) and Fiorentina (1957). In 1957, he was invited to trial with English first division team Liverpool F.C. Perkins ended up trialling and training with Liverpool's city rival Everton F.C. While at Everton Perkins had a physical confrontation with the Everton reserve grade manager after being called a "kangaroo bastard". After this incident, Perkins left Everton to move to Wigan, where he worked as a coal miner at the Mosley Common Colliery alongside Great Britain rugby league player Terry O'Grady. Perkins played two seasons for leading English amateur team Bishop Auckland F.C. between 1957 and 1959. Perkins in mid-1959 decided to return to Australia after trialling with Manchester United. On returning to Australia, Perkins was appointed captain and coach of Adelaide Croatia. At Croatia, he played alongside notable Aboriginal figures Gordon Briscoe and John Moriarty. In 1961, when Perkins moved to Sydney to study at university, he played with Pan-Hellenic (later known as Sydney Olympic FC) in the New South Wales State League where he became captain and coach. He later played for Bankstown and retired in 1965. Following his move to Canberra in 1969, Perkins joined the ANU Soccer Club (later known as the ANU Football Club) as…

Perkins was born on 16 June 1936 in the old Alice Springs Telegraph Station to Hetty Perkins, originally from nearby Arltunga, and Martin Connelly, originally from Mount Isa, Queensland. His mother was born to a white father and an Arrernte mother, while his father had an Irish father and a Kalkadoon mother. Perkins had one full sibling and nine other half-siblings by his mother and was also a cousin of artist and soccer player John Moriarty. He was the great-uncle of Pat Turner, and inspired her work to improve the lives of and right to self-determination for Indigenous people. Between 1952 and 1957, Perkins worked as an apprentice fitter and turner for the British Tube Mills company in Adelaide. He married Eileen Munchenberg, a descendant of a German Lutheran family, on 23 September 1961 and had two daughters (Hetti and Rachel), and a son (Adam). His granddaughter through Hetti is actress Madeleine Madden.

The Freedom Ride

In 1965, he was one of the key members of the Freedom Ride – a bus tour through New South Wales by activists protesting discrimination against Aboriginal people in small towns in NSW, Australia. This action was inspired by the US Civil Rights Movement Freedom Ride campaign in 1961. The Australian Freedom Ride aimed to expose discrepancies in living, education and health conditions among the Aboriginal population. The tour targeted rural towns such as Walgett, Moree, and Kempsey. They acted to publicise acts of blatant discrimination. This was demonstrated through one of the Freedom Ride activities in Walgett. A local RSL club refused entry to Aboriginal people, including those who were ex-servicemen who participated in the two World Wars. At one stage during the Rides, the protesters' bus was run off the road. On 20 February 1965, Perkins and his party tried to enter the swimming pool at Moree, where the local council had barred Aboriginal people from swimming since its opening 40 years earlier. They stood at the gate refusing to let anyone else in if they were not let in. In response to this action, the riders faced physical opposition from several hundred local white Australians, including community leaders, and were pelted with eggs and tomatoes. These events were broadcast across Australia, and under pressure from public opinion, the council eventually reversed the ban on Aboriginal swimmers. The Freedom Ride then moved on, but on the way out…

In 2001, the Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial Oration and Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial Prize were established in his honour by the University of Sydney. In 2009, The Charlie Perkins Trust instituted two scholarships per year to allow Indigenous Australians to study for up to three years at the University of Oxford. The Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, designed in 2012 and opened in June 2014, was named in honour of Perkins. In 2013, Australia Post issued a series of postage stamps featuring five eminent Indigenous rights campaigners, including Perkins, Shirley Smith, Neville Bonner, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Eddie Mabo. In 2025, Football Australia announced the renaming of the First Nations youth football program's invitational teams to the Charles Perkins XI.

In the arts

There are several books about Perkins, and artist Bill Leak painted a portrait of him. In 2018, Paul Kelly wrote a song about Perkins, called "A Bastard Like Me", with the title of the song taken from Perkins' autobiography and the music video featuring footage from his life. It appears on the album Nature.

In film

Freedom Ride (1993) is an episode of four-part documentary called Blood Brothers by Rachel Perkins and Ned R. Lander. Fire Talker (2009) by Ivan Sen uses archival footage from the early 1960s to 2001 to build an intimate portrait of Perkins' life. Remembering Charlie Perkins (2009), in which Gordon Briscoe recalls his friend Perkins' fight for equality and…