Who was the Caribbean-Australian cabaret star who could bring down the house — and come back at racism with a joke? 

"Come sit by me, we don’t eat people anymore."

Nellie Small was born in Sydney in 1900, just before the White Australia policy was introduced.  

She became one of the country’s most beloved performers, famous for wearing men’s suits on stage and off, and for her sharp comebacks.  

In show business circles around Sydney in the 1940 and 50s, the phrase was: “When a show’s not strong enough — send for Nellie!” 

"I’m proud of my Australian birth. But I’d be much happier if more of my fellow countrymen would forget my skin colour is different from them."

Negotiating Australia’s vexed racial politics, Nellie carved out a public space for Black music and queer performance in 1950s Australia. We explore her career and uncover the previously unknown stories of her Caribbean forebears. 

Nellie Small is played by Jamaican-Australian actor Zahra Newman. 

Voices

Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright, and director who is an expert at working with real life subjects and stories, dramatizing them with respect. She has three plays on the NSW HSC Syllabus: Parramatta Girls, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, and Cyberbile. Her play, Letters to Lindy, has seen hundreds of amateur and school productions. Valentine is particularly distinguished in her skills as a co-collaborator, notably with Barbara and the Camp Dogs, which won the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score. She has chronicled her practice in Bowerbird and published the memoir Wed By The Wayside. 

Professor Cassandra Pybus FAHA specializes historical narratives about people who have been marginalized, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island. 

Vanessa Cassin is Education Manager at Society of Australian Genealogists with extensive experience in providing training and assessment in the trustee industry, both as an in-house trainer for the NSW Trustee & Guardian and as an assessor for Western Sydney University the College’s Registered Training Organisation. Vanessa holds a Diploma in Family Historical Studies from the Society of Australian Genealogists and has been researching her own family history for over 20 years. 

Zahra Newman was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and moved to Australia at age 14. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Newman has an extensive list of credits in theatre, television, and film. Her notable works include her performance as Nabalungi in the original Australian cast of The Book of Mormon, and her lead role in the play The Hate Race and in the film Long Story Short. She has received a Green Room Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, and multiple Helpmann Award nominations. Newman played all 23 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s recent one-person production of Dracula. 

Graeme Rhodes’ acting career spans over 30 years and includes numerous theatre, film, television and radio credits. Most recently he has been working as a writer and director for Forum theatre based Industrial safety programs. When he’s not acting he sings with a jazz trio and builds electronic noise making machines. 

Credits 

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation. 

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown 

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington 

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs 

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series. 

More reading about Nellie Small

• Nellie Small on Wikipedia
• Nellie Small: the trailblazing, cross-dressing cabaret star who Australia forgot The Guardian Australia
• From the Archives: The great live music war of 1954 Sydney Morning Herald
• Zoe Coombs Marr on Queerstralia Sydney Morning Herald
• A letter to the editor about soup Sydney Morning Herald
• Send for Nellie in the 2024 Sydney Festival and article by Alana Valentine on the State Library of NSW website