“Black Cockatoo” has overcome disruptions caused by bushfires and Covid since its Sydney Festival debut in 2019, to return to the Brisbane stage on April 8 and 9.

An all First Nations cast pays homage to the incredible feats of these 13 Aboriginal men from western Victoria, who embarked on the treacherous voyage to England and the unknown in 1868, all in the name of cricket.

Few would know that one man died on that tour, and was buried in London, or that from his sporting feats on that tour Johnny Mullagh became one of Australia’s first great sporting heroes.

And that is what Australian writer Geoffrey Atherden (known for his work on Mother and Son and Babakiuera) and director Wesley Enoch (Black Diggers) hope to rectify in this collaboration, set on stage at the time of the 150th anniversary of this historic tour.

Enoch says so much of their deeds need to better understood and celebrated.

“In many ways, by telling the stories, we actually get to forward our culture,” Enoch says.

“Our culture grows and I’m not just talking about Aboriginal culture, but everyone’s culture grows because we understand where we come from.

“And what’s fantastic is when a story like Black Cockatoo, yes, it tells a story about cricket, but it tells a story about Australia at the time and about our ambitions as a set of colonies then and how we could have thought differently and made the world different.

“So by telling stories, we somehow own and understand our past better. This is a story that people go, “Oh, I understand that Aboriginal Australians were the first cricket team, but I don’t know the ins and outs.” And this show does that.”

At the time the First XI played, cricket was still itself evolving as a game. No fours or sixes existed, rules were still being written, and the players bowled underarm. But the team still amazed the British crowds with their cricketing talent.

“The Aboriginal players would run backwards to catch a ball and this was very rarely done in cricket, and so when they toured overseas, the idea of running backwards to catch a ball was revelatory but now everyone does that,” Enoch said.

“We asked the question, how did they learn to play cricket? And it came from the station owners, the farm owners. It was a tradition in England that if you owned a farm or a big estate, the staff would often learn cricket and there’d be a cricket match between the rich land owners and the staff.

“And so it kind of grew from that as well. This sense of cricket being a level playing field, if you like, a place where everyone could show off their skills and talents and everyone likes to win. So when they found out the Aboriginal players were so amazing, they all went, “Let’s get more Aboriginal players in. They’re good, they can run.”

But rather than returning to Australia as heroes, the team came back to find the world they once knew had gone.

As Atherden explains, while the team became internationally renowned for their athletic prowess, it didn’t stop prejudice on their return home.

“I think audiences and people generally are more open now to looking with greater honesty at the parts of our history that we tend to ignore or overlook or dismiss,” Atherden says.

“While they were away in England playing pretty good cricket really, the Victorian authorities moved Aboriginal people off their land and on reserves and mission stations,” Atherden says.

“So they came back from a quite successful tour to find that they’d been moved off their land. And really that was the end of Aboriginal cricket.

“In particular, the story of Johnny Mullagh, who was told when he came back he had to live on one of the reserve mission stations. And he said, no, I’m not going to do that.

“And alone of all the team, he stayed on his own country. Being on his own country was more important to him than being with other Aboriginal people, more important than maybe finding a life partner or wife or someone. So he ended up being alone and died alone.”

Uncle Richard Kennedy was engaged as a cultural consultant on the story. He is a descendent of another member of the First XI – Dick-a-Dick, Jungunjinanuke.

The play has morphed from Atherden’s first iteration of the story as a movie screenplay.

He says Black Cockatoo is also funny and moving, celebrating the resilience of Aboriginal people and their humour in the face of such injustice.

“There were plenty of Aboriginal people who tell me that Aboriginal people do a lot of laughing, at the world, themselves and so on,” he says.

“Just a kind of mischief at times in the way they treat the white world as well. So I built that into the play where I could.

“Several of them were really good cricketers and were acknowledged of that. As a group, they impressed English audiences, which not only did they pay cricket, but they had what they called sporting days when they did running races and so forth, but also boomerang throwing.

“They also did mock battles and stuff, which is probably the sort of thing they wouldn’t do now, but it worked in the Victorian era.

“And so they were very popular and large crowds came to see them.

“The idea of seeing a black person was a novelty at that time in Victorian England.”

The decision to have an all-Indigenous cast playing all roles including white English characters was crucial, Enoch says.

“We sit some of the play in 2018, the 150th anniversary, and these young Aboriginal activists who break into a cricket museum to understand a little bit more about this cricket team and what they mean. So there’s a contemporary story there as well,” he says.

“This story needed to be told, so that was a great thing to do. And in fact, a great inspiration. Johnny Mullagh, who’s one of the key players who we follow through in the play, there’s now what’s called the Johnny Mullagh medal, which is the best and fairest medal from the Boxing Day test.

“We’d love people to come. Yes, it’s the historic story, but also there’s a contemporary story about what it means to us today?”

Black Cockatoo plays at Brisbane Powerhouse on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 April”