Rare photos found in attic shed light on Indigenous rights movement

Rare photographs of historic Pilbara strike camps shown for first time The glint in Captain Wilson's eye softens as he looks at the decades-old image. Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images and names of people who have died. Two men frozen in time on a sun-hardened desert landscape. The Nyamal elder recognises the one on the left. It is him, with a solemn expression and arms set like stone for the task at hand. But it is his companion who seizes his attention. "He was my friend," he said. The photograph is one of dozens recently uncovered in an attic more than 1,500 kilometres away from Mr Wilson's Roebourne nursing home. Taken around WA's Pilbara region by an anthropologist during the 1950s and 60s, they tell the story of what one professor called "a revolutionary communist movement … on the very margins of Australian society". Two decades before the famed Wave Hill walk-offs, the 1946 Pilbara strike and ensuing struggles helped launch the Indigenous rights movement. Forgotten chapter revealed The snapshots are being displayed for the first time at the University of Western Australia's Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in Perth. In 1946, hundreds of Aboriginal stockmen and women walked off the Pilbara's pastoral stations after years of poor wages and brutally unfair working conditions. The workers had carved sheep-grazing country from the arid expanse and did so for little more than rations of tea, tobacco, or sugar. They resolved to protest, sparked by unprecedented organisation across language groups and launching a bitter rebellion that lasted three years. "I've heard that Indigenous people are lazy people … looking at the pictures here, it shows that they are very hard-working people," Captain's daughter and exhibition co-curator said Ursula Wilson said. "It was a tough time … and they endured a lot." Many refused to return to the stations. Instead, they formed mining cooperatives and pearl shell farms under the guidance of communist organiser Don McLeod. The operations were some of the first of their kind in the now-industry-heavy Pilbara. "It doesn't really fit into mainstream Australian history about the government suddenly awarding Aboriginal people their land back in the 1970s," said UWA art history professor Darren Jorgensen. "These guys were really out there on their own … they were economically independent." Dr Jorgensen said the visual record was a remarkable find. "We have no Australian prime ministers that visited these camps. They were hated by governments, they were hated by local pastoralists," he said. "[This was] a revolutionary communist movement taking place on the very margins of Australian society, taking place far from the cities." On par with Wave Hill One photo in particular stood out to Mr Jorgensen. "We all know the story of the Gurundji walk-off simply because of that one amazing Mervyn Bishop photograph of prime minister [Gough] Whitlam pouring sand into Vincent Lingiari's hands," Mr Jorgensen said. "There's a couple of pictures here that have the same iconic value. "One of them is of Captain Wilson about to lift an air compressor." The place of honour is not lost on Mr Wilson's other daughter, Sharon Coppin, who will accompany her father for the journey south to attend the exhibition's opening. "Just knowing what he's been through … [it makes me] very emotional and proud," she said. "Proud that he's come a long way." Chance rediscovery The original film slides were captured by John Wilson, a white anthropologist and no relation to Captain Wilson, in the wake of the strike. "He was fascinated by the way they actually organised themselves with artisanal mining and shell camps … and made very close connections with people there," John's daughter Bu Wilson told the ABC. It was her chance discovery of the photos in a box in the attic of her parents' Fremantle home that led to the photos seeing the light of day again. "All of a sudden, I saw boxes under a wardrobe, and I went, 'I don't know what those are,'" she said. "It was a whole pile more of the slides." Contained in the tiny translucent squares were lean figures toiling in rusty red earth, cloudless blue skies stretching out above them. Ms Wilson recognised the scenes immediately. "My dad died five years ago, but I still feel that he's with me," she said. "It's fantastic being able to share that body of work with other people." Strike Camps: The Photographs of John Wilson opens at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery on Wednesday, September 2.