Untold Stories: Memories and Lives of Victorian Kooris

Abstract

'I'm your half-brother and I'm here to stay. This is my home.' With these words Wilmot Abraham sought refuge with his white relations. Wilmot was the best-known Aboriginal in the Warrnambool district of Victoria, a man who maintained the old way of life long after his people were dispossessed. Local farmers spoke of him as 'the last of his tribe'. Few were aware that his father had been a white lad working as a boundary rider on the Western District frontier; and only the Aboriginal community knew that Wilmot had barely escaped with his life from the violent seizure of his mother's people's country. In Untold Stories, Jan Critchett presents a series of moving Aboriginal biographies from the Western District of Victoria, drawing both on the oral tradition of local Koori Elders and on official records. Wilmot's is one of the many untold stories that appear here for the first time. Untold Stories opens our eyes to a number of remarkable individuals who managed to make a life for themselves in the interstices of the society that had dispossessed them. Their long-running battle to maintain their culture and their connection to country, in the face of a regime that seemed bent on denying their humanity, is both humbling and inspiring.

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