Bill Robertson was a well known Central Queensland identity whose series of broadcasts on radio 2BL in Sydney demonstrated knowledge gained from growing up with the Aboriginal children of Yaamba.
According to his obituaries, he had been born in Scotland, and arrived in Australia sometime around 1870 ('over fifty years' before his death in 1932), when he went to live with uncles at Caithness Park cattle station. His father was said to have been a missionary in Sydney; his brother (Rev. A. Dunnett Robertson) was a minister in the Presbyterian Church and his nephew, Canon Robertson, was based in Canberra. The family's ministerial connections come through in the obituaries as an attempt to construct his interest in Aboriginal culture as a 'a part of the missionary spirit inherited from his Scottish forbears'.
Robertson was particularly associated with people called 'Myall Murris' in contemporary newspapers: the Pitta Pitta / Bittha Bittha people of the area around Boulia in Queensland.
He died in 1932 and was buried in Waverley Cemetery.
Source:
Champion, T.S., 'Bringa : Late William Robertson -- An Appreciation', Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1932, p.8.
