The Davis family moved to Yarloop when Jack was five. (p.6) He remembers walking two kilometres to school with his three older siblings. (p.11) On his first day, an older boy named Lennie stuck a pencil in Jack’s back after he refused to give up his sandwich, and he retaliated by punching the boy in the face.

Jack Davis, who is widely known as a poet and playwright, became the Western Australian state secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) in 1969, after the position had been unfilled for two years.