Walker survived the attack, and attempted to remain in Darwin as an active union organizer, even though the city was under military control.
[4] During the public debate over this issue, Joe Walker circulated accounts, based on reports from union organisers, of savage mistreatment of Aborigines on cattle stations, similar to some of the brutality he would later depict in his novel, No Sunlight Singing.
Joe Walker had had first-hand experience of life on outback cattle stations (notably with Vestey’s) and had been deeply affected by what he saw as the ignoble treatment of the aborigines they employed.
His novel No Sunlight Singing, written after he left the Territory and was living in Melbourne, Victoria, was an attempt to draw attention to the plight of this people, whom he saw as being exploited by station owners, who were themselves often absentee landlords.
Although Joe Walker did not play a leading role in any political organisation during the 1960s, he joined in many of the campaigns of the period, including the protests against the hanging of Ronald Ryan (the last person executed in Australia) in 1967, the gaoling of union leader Clarrie O'Shea in 1969 and the struggles over the Vietnam War and conscription, from the mid-1960s onwards.