TThe narrator’s accents say it all: you hear Southern English, Australian English, American English and Hebridean English. What they have in common is that they are the adult voices of orphans who were flown out of South Vietnam as part of Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Placed with families from many different cultures around the world, they grew up never knowing the countries they had left behind.
One of them is Burton C. Williams, who grew up in Adelaide’s sun and surfing tradition. Living in a predominantly white country and suffering racist abuse, Williams sings songs full of insults but doesn’t know Vietnamese or how to cook South Asian food. In 2021, his acting job took him to the set of Silent Roar, a film about a grieving surfer, filmed on the Isle of Lewis. There, he met Andy Yearley, a fellow Vietnamese immigrant and “the best music teacher on the island.”
Precious Cargo was the product of their meeting, a monologue by Williams about identity, belonging and our own displacement by the tides of history, a fascinating piece that echoes Laura Cameron-Lewis’s 2003 play, Who Do You Think You Are? Surus Mala Robbie Thomson projects striking images of children, war and the sea onto his cardboard box sets.
At the same time, they feel like missed opportunities. Meeting Yearly is just one of many anecdotes in Williams’ autobiographical story, and though his music is featured on the soundtrack, they are not equal partners in the collaboration. We’re told about their contrasting experiences on opposite sides of the world, and those of several other orphans, but it would have been far more interesting to see them collide in person.
