Level 8

Francis Lovegrove, or Uncle Fran as he was widely known in the community, was a Ngarrindjeri Elder who made significant contributions to the Raukkan and broader Murray Lands and Coorong Aboriginal communities. He is highly regarded for his legacy of leadership and mentoring, particularly in relation to Ngarrindjeri culture and history; employment, education and training; and community governance. Uncle Fran sat on many boards and committees over the years, including as Chairperson of the Council of Aboriginal Elders of SA and Co-Chair of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute’s Aboriginal Health Governance Committee in later life, in addition to his roles at Aboriginal Family Support Services and the Riverland Regional Health Service.

Francis grew up at Raukkan community until he was removed from his family and sent by the ‘Protector’ to live with a white family in the Adelaide suburbs. Here he started an apprenticeship and became qualified as a motor mechanic, working in various jobs and returning to Raukkan as Mechanical Works Manager for the Point McLeay Council in 1975. After a couple of years here, then as a leading hand with the Murray Bridge Council, Francis moved into State Government Aboriginal Affairs administration, and following this, to the community sector with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM) in 1980, where he would stay in various roles for over two decades.

Whilst working at ALRM Francis undertook further study in Aboriginal Legal Studies and Business Management, and was appointed State Administrator in 1993, with responsibility for the administrative requirements of ALRM across the state, and liaising with representatives from government at the local, state and Commonwealth levels. From 1995 Francis was Regional Manager of ALRM’s Murray Bridge office, servicing the legal needs of Aboriginal people across the Riverland, Murray Lands, Southeast, Fleurieu Peninsula and Barossa Valley regions. Francis then transitioned to the employment and training sector, focussed on developing the Ngarrindjeri community through the administration of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) with the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association and the Raukkan Community Council, where he oversaw sixty participants development in employment skills and work placements. He then worked in Aboriginal Health as a Community Development and Liaison Officer for the Adelaide Hills Community Health Service, before taking up the aforementioned board appointments.

Uncle Fran was also a committed family man, married to Irene, with children Darren and Danielle, a grandson, and many nieces, nephews and other extended family around the country.

Uncle Fran’s expertise in community governance were developed over many years of community service, including on a range of committees and boards. Pursuant to his legal and social justice interests, Uncle Fran was an ALRM Community Representative; Chairperson of the Lower Murray Community Forum, working with government and police on crime prevention, diversion and referral services; and an appointed Court Elder/Respected Person with the Courts Administration Authority’s Aboriginal Programs.

Committee and advisory roles in other fields of expertise to Francis are many, notably including his advisory role as an Aboriginal Health Expert to the SA Government’s Health Performance Council; as an Elder Representative to the Moorundi Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service Committee; his involvement in the Lower Murray Nungas Club, as President, and Chairperson of the Youth Committee; and others across sport, natural resource management, and education and training.

He is a former Chairperson of the Point McLeay Community Council and the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee, and was an ATSIC* Regional Councillor for twelve years, representing the Moorundi, then amalgamated Patpa Warra Yunti Regional Councils from 1990 to 2002, including as Deputy Chairperson.

In 2017 Uncle Fran was integral to the highly anticipated and publicised reinterment of his great uncle Private Mack Miller, a Ngarrindjeri Veteran of WWI who was finally laid to rest at his home of Raukkan almost a century after he passed away and was buried in circumstances reflective and emblematic of the discrimination faced by Aboriginal returned servicemen of that and later eras.

In 2010 Uncle Fran was awarded for Outstanding Service to the Council of Aboriginal Elders of SA, as an Elder of the Murray / Mid Mallee Regional Forum. In 2013 he was awarded NAIDOC SA Male Elder of the Year.**

Uncle Fran passed away in August 2021, aged 80.

* Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

** National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, South Australia

Dr Doreen Kartinyeri was a Ngarrindjeri Elder born at Point McLeay Mission (Raukkan) in 1935. ‘Auntie Dodo’ gained national prominence in the mid-1990s after seeking to protect important sites to Ngarrindjeri women, opposing the Hindmarsh Island (Kumarangk) Bridge development in submissions that would come to be reported as “secret women’s business.”

Doreen was also celebrated for her work on genealogy, publishing many important books on Aboriginal family and mission histories that have been instrumental in reconnecting families impacted by the Stolen Generations, and a valuable resource for all South Australian Aboriginal people.

At age 10 Doreen was sent to the Salvation Army Girls Home in Fullarton, where she stayed for three years. She then worked as a domestic servant for a few years before being allowed to return to Raukkan to care for her Nanna, and at 16 became a foster mother to her three young cousins.

Doreen decided to move to Point Pearce while visiting her Auntie Rosie Kropinyeri, where she became involved in many aspects of community life. When she was pregnant with her first child, Auntie Rosie shared with her the stories of Kumarangk whilst imparting other Ngarrindjeri women’s knowledge. Doreen’s nanna and Auntie Rosie were principal sources of the cultural knowledge that would later become testimony in the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair, as well as cultivating her passion for family history and genealogy.

After relocating once more to Adelaide, Doreen began her work as an historian at the University of South Australia, before starting the Aboriginal Family History Unit at the SA Museum in 1987. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia in 1995.

In 1994 Doreen was named ‘South Australian Aboriginal of the Year’, and first became aware of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge proposal, leading a group of women opposed to the development, and providing confidential testimony. Shortly after, these submissions were improperly distributed, causing extreme distress for Doreen and a profoundly compounded sense of injustice. Doreen maintained involvement in the community resistance, and was later vindicated by the findings of a subsequent inquiry.

Since then her research has culminated in several important books, including ‘Narungga Nation’ in 2002, and ‘Ngarrindjeri Nation’ in 2006. She was awarded NAIDOC SA Elder of the Year in 2007.

Auntie Dodo died in 2007 a proud Ngarrindjeri Elder and custodian of traditional knowledge, and her legacy of published historical and genealogical work will inform the South Australian community for generations to come.

Uncle Tom Trevorrow was a Ngarrindjeri Elder and esteemed leader, who worked tirelessly throughout his life to the benefit of Ngarrindjeri and the broader Aboriginal community. Tom was born at Meningie in 1954, and grew up at the surrounding fringe camps with his extended family and others who chose not to live at the Point McLeay mission, and were otherwise segregated from the non-Aboriginal township. Here, along the River Murray, the Coorong, and the Lakes, at places such as One and Three Mile Camps, Tom received his education in Ngarrindjeri culture and history, and how to read and care for Country, from the Old People. Tom’s mother, Thora Lampard, was the daughter of Stephen Lampard and Rose Watson. Tom’s father was Joseph Trevorrow, son of Alice Walker and Jim Trevorrow.

Uncle Tom was a sought after custodian of Ngarrindjeri culture, who took his responsibilities to his cultural inheritance very seriously. Alongside his wife Ellen and older brother George, Tom worked with the community to establish institutions like the Ngarringdjeri Lands and Progress Association and Camp Coorong, where he was forever sharing his knowledge and philosophy, and teaching everyone from school groups, to Ngarrindjeri youths, to researchers in fields including archaeology and anthropology, law and history, linguistics and environmental science. At Uncle Tom’s funeral after his passing in 2013, Premier Jay Weatherill remarked that “when Tom spoke, people listened. Tom always talked about challenging moral issues with integrity and clarity.”

Tom was Chairperson of the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee, and gave his considerable support to the Ngarrindjeri women contesting the development that threatened sacred sites at Kumarangk, during the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair. After the 1995 Royal Commission, Tom worked on the Heritage application asserting Ngarrindjeri interests over the contested ‘Meeting of the Waters’ site.

Along with his brother George Trevorrow and Matthew Rigney, Tom helped develop the ‘Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan’ Agreements (“Listen to Ngarrindjeri Speaking”), negotiated with the Alexandrina Council to assert Ngarrindjeri claims of traditional ownership and rights to determine matters concerning their traditional Country in accordance with their laws, customs and traditions. This agreement was an important instrument in the repatriation and cultural reburial of stolen Ngarrindjeri remains from Australian and international museums, to which Tom was also integral; and more broadly, redefined the Council’s understanding of ongoing Ngarrindjeri custodianship of the region and challenged the limiting of their interests to the archaeological and ‘pre-history’.

Tom was also importantly involved in negotiating the co-management of the Coorong National Park, and was a Ngarrindjeri representative to the Murray Darling Basin Commission. Tom remembered a time when the river system was healthy and abundant, and held deep concerns about its future. In a report to the Commission, Tom expressed this as such:

“The land and waters is a living body. We the Ngarrindjeri people are a part of its existence. The land and waters must be healthy for the Ngarrindjeri people to be healthy. We are hurting for our country. The Land is dying, the River is dying, the Kurangk (Coorong) is dying and the Murray Mouth is closing. What does the future hold for us?”

Tom Trevorrow had a deeply spiritual connection to his ancestral home. His ngatji (totem, or literally “my closest friend”) was the Ngori (Pelican). His cultural knowledge informed his ecology, so that when the Ngori was healthy, his Country was healthy, but “if my ngatji is sick and dying, it means my country is getting sick and dying. That’s connection to country.” He would point to the story of Thukeri (Bony Bream) as an allegory of the perils of greed when discussing the over-allocation of water from the Murray-Darling system. At Tom’s funeral, at the Meningie Uniting Church on 2 May 2013, the crowd gathered outside witnessed a large formation of Ngori fly across from Lake Albert at the moment the service began. Two hours later they would fly back again, as the service concluded.

Following the death of Tom’s brother George in 2011, and then his Ngarrindjeri brother Matthew Rigney, Tom became Chair of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority, the peak body representing the communities and organisations that constitute the Ngarrindjeri Nation. He expressed his commitment to the ideals of the Regional Authority at the time in terms of his responsibility to “act in the best interest of the Ngarrindjeri Nation in relation to our Culture, Heritage and Beliefs, in connection with our Lands and Waters and all living things, and the mental and physical wellbeing of my People in all aspects of the past, present and to the future life.”

Tom was a strong advocate for Treaty between Aboriginal Nations and the Australian State, believing that this would be a powerful tool for healing and reconciliation. He looked to the promises contained in the 1836 Letters Patent for South Australia as a foundational document in this process, in its naming of rights for Aboriginal people and their descendants to freely occupy and enjoy their lands and waters, that have been largely ignored since; and was working with the South Australian Government on the implementation of the Letters Patent before his death. In her eulogy to Tom published in Aboriginal History, Karen Hughes remarked that he perceived the Letters Patent as being “key to resolving the unfinished business that impacted Ngarrindjeri futures”, and speculated that “this may prove one of his greatest legacies.”

George Trevorrow was a Senior Ngarrindjeri Elder, known within the Ngarrindjeri governance structure as ‘Rupulle of the Ngarrindjeri Tendi’, signifying his position of leadership of the council of tribes that make up the Ngarrindjeri Nation. George was born at Raukkan in 1951, and grew up at the camps around Meningie the One Mile and Three Mile camps, where he learned Ngarrindjeri culture amongst his extended family and Elders.

George worked for the Engineering and Water Supply at Coonalpyn and Raukkan at the age of twelve so as to provide for his family, before working as a fisherman in the Coorong, then for the Meningie Council and at the Meningie Area School as an Aboriginal Education Worker. Whilst working for the Education Department as a regional advisor in Aboriginal education in the early-1980s, George contributed significantly to establishing the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association, and the Camp Coorong Race Relations and Cultural Education Centre.

George was Chairperson of many Ngarrindjeri governance bodies, including the Lower Murray Aboriginal Heritage Committee, the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association, the Ngarrindjeri Natural Resource Management Committee, and the Ngarrindjeri Governance Working Party. He was a member of the State Aboriginal Heritage Committee, the South Australian Aboriginal Tourism Committee, and served as Regional Councillor on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Patpa Warra Yunti Regional Council.

George was a principal contributor to the 2007 ‘Ngarrindjeri Nation Yarluwar-Ruwe Plan: Caring for Ngarrindjeri Sea Country and Culture’ – the first of its kind in South Australia, providing a strong statement of Ngarrindjeri rights, identity, authority and responsibilities. He was also integral to the ‘Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan’ Agreements (“Listen to Ngarrindjeri Speaking”).

From 2007 George was also the inaugural Chairperson of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority (NRA), the peak body representing the communities and organisations that constitute the Ngarrindjeri Nation.

George was passionate about sustainable economic development and tourism, serving as Chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Tourism Reference Group, and in 2000 becoming the owner and Manager of the new Coorong Wilderness Lodge with his wife Shirley.

Alongside his younger brother Tom, George was part of a group of Ngarrindjeri leaders to initiate discussions of the 1836 Letters Patent for South Australia, as a powerful tool for healing and reconciliation in its naming of rights for Aboriginal people and their descendants to freely occupy and enjoy their lands and waters. This remains unfinished business with the intent that it inform future Treaty negotiations.

Uncle George passed away in 2011, and was survived by his wife Shirley who passed in 2013 and five children, as well as a number of foster children they raised together.

David Unaipon is a Ngarrindjeri man born in 1872 at the Point McLeay Mission, now known as Raukkan in the Coorong region of South Australia. The Mission was established by the Aborigines Friend Association (AFA) in 1859. It is here that Unaipon’s father begins life as a missionary and preacher, and Unaipon receives a Christian education.

The mission also provided opportunity for Uniapon to explore his interests in engineering, music, drawing and literature. He became intrigued by the idea of perpetual motion. Drawing on the way that boomerangs spin through the air, Unaipon developed plans for a flying machine that used spinning blades allowing it to raise straight up; much like the modern-day helicopter.

Unaipon also studied the machine used in sheep-sheering and designed a modified handpiece. His design was adopted. But, apart from a 1910 newspaper report acknowledging him as the inventor, he received no credit or financial reward. During his life, Unaipon had provisional patents for 19 inventions, however he could never afford a full patent. Decades later his sheep shearing design would be inscribed on the $50 note.

Uniapon was a gifted writer and committed to bringing about positive change for Aboriginal people. Throughout the 1920s he travelled around South Australia and Victoria delivering lectures and sermons at churches and schools. It was while travelling that Unaipon started to compile a collection of stories about Aboriginal cultures and customs.

In the 1950s he was commissioned to assemble a book on Indigenous Australian stories. Incredibly his manuscript was published under the name of William Ramsey Smith. This wrong was finally made right in 2006 when Melbourne University Press published the work under Unaipon’s name as Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines. Unaipon is now celebrated as the first Australian Aboriginal author to be published in English. In 1988, the David Unaipon Literary Award was established in recognition of his talents.

Website Reference:

David Ngunaitponi (Unaipon) | AIATSIS