Aboriginal king honoured in NSW truth-telling launch

Australia Broadcast Center

23-05-2025

Walking across an unassuming pedestrian bridge covered in graffiti in Sydney's south, you'd never know the riverbanks beneath were the centre of the Aboriginal civil rights movement 100 years ago.
Salt Pan Creek, on Bidjigal Country between Peakhurst and Padstow about 30 minutes from Sydney's CBD, was a place where political radicals preached ideas that would ultimately lead to the foundational concepts of the Uluru Statement from the Heart — which asked for formal recognition of First Nations Australians.
"This is not something that's new to us or our country, this is an ask that's been going on for many, many decades through many iterations," Wiradjuri woman Bridget Cama told the ABC's Indigenous Affairs Team.
This unfinished business, documents and photographs from Salt Pan Creek, has been curated by Ms Cama who is the co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue — part of a group of First Nations representatives who mandated the Uluru Statement.
"It was very rare at this time for Aboriginal people in New South Wales to own freehold land," said Ms Cama.
Escaping the tightly-controlled Aboriginal Mission system, dispossessed First Nations people used Salt Pan Creek as a refuge, including Dharawal woman Ellen Anderson who bought a block of land on the banks of the Georges River site in the early 1900s.
"It was very rare at this time for Aboriginal people in New South Wales to own freehold land," said Ms Cama.
"Ellen Anderson definitely deserves to be recognised for having that foresight in understanding how these systems were at play at that particular time, how she would protect her children and keep her family and her mob out of the gaze of the Aborigines Protection Board."
The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 surveilled and controlled many aspects of Aboriginal people in New South Wales.
Mark Davidson, MLA for Cobar, told the NSW Parliament on May 2, 1940 "it was not right" that the bill gives the NSW Aborigines Protection Board "power to take control of Aborigines without consent of the parents."
"Girls of 12, 14, 15 years of age have been hired out to stations and have become pregnant," Mr Davidson said.
"Young male Aborigines who have been sent to stations have received no payment for their services."
In these early decades of the 20th Century, six dwellings were established on neighbouring residential properties at Salt Pan Creek. Ellen Anderson and her family gathered shellfish, wildflowers, swamp wallabies and other river produce to make a living.
"That is self-determination," Ms Cama said.
"At one point in time there was up to 30 people living there and 14 children."
The Aboriginal royal promised the duke he would be greeted with 'a royal welcome' to show that his people were 'loyal to the British throne". Anderson told the paper that Prince Henry would be showered in gifts including a boomerang made by his great-grandfather, who Anderson says witnessed Captain Cook's landing at Botany Bay.
That same year, King Burraga was filmed on the banks of Salt Pan Creek advocating for New South Wales mob to petition King George V for better conditions, rights and recognition.
"All the Black man wants is representation in federal parliament," Mr Anderson said in his appeal filmed by Cinesound.
"This is obviously an ongoing issue for us as First Nations people in this country that ask still to be recognised, for us to have a say on the issues that effect us," Ms Cama said.
The little-known history of Salt Pan Creek features in a truth-telling exhibition at Sydney's Hurstville Library.
It's part of Towards Truth — the truth-telling project by Uluru Dialogue — one of the groups that mandated the Uluru Statement, which was delivered at a historic 2017 conference in the red centre after 12 regional dialogue meetings across the country. The statement called for three major reforms: an Indigenous Voice to Parliament enshrined in the constitution, Treaty and Truth-telling.
On the eighth anniversary of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, its authors including Professor Megan Davis AC, Uluru Dialogue Co-Chair, say Towards Truth is being launched with the aim of mapping laws and policies that have affected First Nations since 1788, starting in New South Wales.
"It provides a factual, politics-free compilation of historical legislation and policy in NSW as it impacted Aboriginal people," Professor Davis said in a statement.
"Towards Truth was conceived after our first-hand, on-the-ground work of listening to mob talk about Aboriginal history and Australian history during the Referendum Council process, which lasted for more than two years."
You can see the Towards Truth Exhibition until June 1 at Hurstville Library, Corner Queens Road & Dora Street, Hurstville, Sydney.