Oodgeroo Noonuccal

This is a personal account of my association with Oodgeroo Noonuccal and the context in which it occurred.

A couple of generations of young Aboriginal…

A dear friend of mine and Kath's wrote the poem that follows. I think it is a lovely poem and I thank Eileen for writing…

There are few moments in contemporary Australian history that I have found more uplifting than 16 August 1991. It was on that day that, in…

Kath was always a leader — she got us involved in all kinds of mischief. These are some examples Kath used to scribble from when…

Oodgeroo, or Kath Walker, as she then was, visited China from 12 September to 3 October 1984 in a delegation comprising Caroline Turner (as leader)…

Politics has been described in many ways, most of them unflattering and all of them seemingly opposed to whatever poetry may be. Politics is the…

I first came across Oodgeroo's writing in 1965. I was living in Nigeria at the time, where Australia hardly entered one's consciousness. The slim volume…

Jackie Kay's country is Scotland but she can be demonised within it because she is black. The poem's narrator has to assert her right to…

Australia in 1972 was almost ready for the "It's Time" election when I took a job at Brian Clouston's Jacaranda Press. Two years before, Kath…

A message stick sent to Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal from our brother Ken Upton of the Darug tribe, inviting her to visit Darug lands brought…

My copy of My People — a 1986 reprint — has a photograph of Kath Walker on the cover. She sits on a rock at…

The past and history have been foregrounded in Aboriginal consciousness as issues that demand attention whereas the history of white Australia has often been taken…

Long before the British invaded Australia our people expressed their emotions, our history, the sacred and secular events of our lives, via the medium of…

It was 1984 and Kath Walker, as she was then, had just witnessed the final rehearsal of You Came To My Country and You Didn't…

‘Oodgeroo…never once discribed herself as a poet. She often said, when pressed, that she was an educationalist and that her job was to educate both…

For those of us who knew Oodgeroo well and loved her dearly our attempts to contribute to this book are difficult as we are still…

Every memory has a point of departure.

My own starting point was a Wednesday in late August, 1980 T he place was Minjerriba (North Stradbroke…

"White people want to do something about Aborigines, but they don't know how to go about it," said Kath Walker (Oodgeroo) to reporter Jim Hall…