Thursday, April 18, 2024  
 
 
       
1938 Day of Mourning
     
   
       

L to R: William (Bill) Ferguson, Jack Kinchela, Isaac Ingram, Doris Williams, Esther Ingram, Arthur

Williams Jr, Phillip Ingram, unkown, Louisa Agnes Ingram holding daughter Olive, Jack Patten
  
Women and children were at the heart of the protest that birthed NAIDOC | NITV 2019

     
   
       

... This now-famous photograph was in our family photo album when I was growing up, next to mine and my brother's school class portraits and snaps of our favourite pets. The people in it played an enormous influence on my life and it's time to put their names on the public record. They are (from left to right) William Ferguson, Jack Kinchela, Isaac Ingram, Doris Williams (Aunty Dorry), Esther Ingram (Aunty Esther), Arthur Williams jnr (Uncle Nino), Phillip Ingram (Uncle Chocko), Louisa Agnes Ingram OAM (Nan) with daughter Olive Ingram (Aunty Ollie) and Jack Patten. Only the dark-haired person in the background to the right is unknown to me.

 

Of the women and children, only two are alive today. They are my aunts, Esther Carroll, and Ollie Campbell.  My Aunt Sylvia Scott, eldest child of the Ingram family, remembers January 26, 1938, as a typically hot summer day in Sydney.

 

'Mum needed my help with the littler kids, my younger brothers and sisters,' recalls Sylvia.. 'But we were staying at La Perouse and I really wanted (Granny Lizzie to take me) to swim and play at the beach.' Which is how Sylvia ended up becoming the only Ingram child absent from the photo. [Millie was not yet born.]

 

Aunty Esther recalls my grandfather, Lochie Ingram, coming to Sydney with the family in late 1937 to help his brother, Sousie, run his new business. Uncle Sousie (who would later become better known as Evonne Goolagong's grandfather) had lost his leg in an accident and bought a store in Redfern with the settlement proceeds.

 

The Ingram family's presence on that day stems back to Cummeragunja, on the NSW/Victorian border, the home of Jack Patten and the place where my grandfather was born. The Cummeragunja mob were no strangers to protesting harsh conditions for Aboriginal people. Grandfather organised the tarpaulin muster at the Day of Mourning conference, Uncle Sousie hobbled around urging donations. ...


c. Suzanne Ingram 'The people in THAT picture' Koori Mail, 14 July 2004

     
   
       
     
   
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