Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Official and Newspaper Accounts of Wave Hill in Early Air Searches
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Dandy Danbayarri's story describes in detail the construction in 1929 of the Wave Hill airstrip, which was built to accommodate planes belonging to a search party, and the first landings on it. The planes were participating in the search for aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and the airstrip was one of several that allowed them to fly directly across the country from New South Wales and Victoria, instead of following the coast via Perth.' Kingsford Smith, missing in north-western Australia, was soon found alive near Wyndham; however, the airstrip at Wave Hill was to very soon see much greater use than expected when the Kookaburra, a plane travelling north to join the search, was forced to land in scrub about 130 kilometres south-east of Wave Hill. The cattle station was then used as a base for one of the search parties. These events captured the attention of the nation at the time and are documented in many aviation histories and pilot biographies.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Yijarni : True Stories from Gurindji Country Erika Charola (editor), Felicity Meakins (editor), Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press , 2016 9469367 2016 selected work prose Indigenous story

    'On 23 August 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, protesting against poor working conditions and the taking of their land by pastoralists. Led by Vincent Lingiari, this land-mark action in 1966 precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. While it is well known that the Walk Off was driven by the poor treatment of Aboriginal workers, what is less well known is the previous decades of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists. Told in both English and Gurindji, these compelling and detailed oral accounts of the events that Gurindji elders either witnessed or heard from their parents and grandparents, will ignite the interest of audiences nationally and internationally and challenge revisionist historians who question the extent of frontier battles and the legitimacy of the Stolen Generations. ...' (Source: AIATSIS website)

    Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press , 2016
    pg. 144
Last amended 26 Oct 2017 07:33:11
Subjects:
  • Daguragu / Kalkaringi / Wave Hill, Victoria River area, Central Northern Territory, Northern Territory,
  • 1929
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