Wave Hill Strike
The Wave Hill Strike, or the Wave Hill Walk Off as it more commonly known, was one of the longest and most influential civil rights movements in Australia’s history in terms of what it accomplished and what it was for.
Wave Hill Station was a large cattle station located almost 600km south of Darwin, and was run by a large British pastoral company named Vesteys. The company employed a large amount of Aboriginal labour on the station, mostly from the Gurindji area. The aboriginal stockmen were payed next to nothing whereas non-aboriginals of the same capacity were payed much more than their aboriginal counterparts. An attempt to introduce equal wages for Aboriginal workers was made in 1965, but in March 1966 the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission decided to delay the attempt till 1968. …show more content…
He was born in 1919 at Victoria River Gorge, Northern Territory, and son of Gurindji parents. Both his mother and his father were employed on the 9065 km² Vestey-owned cattle station. Aged about 12 he was absorbed into the station work at the stock camps, where cattle from the 80,000 strong herd were mustered, branded and drafted into mobs of 1200 bullocks to be driven to meatworks at Port Darwin.
On 23 August 1966, tired of the Aborigines being 'treated like dogs' in their own country, Lingiari led two hundred of his people, employees of Wave Hill station, with their families, in a 'walk-off'. Encouraged by Brian Manning and a Roper River Aboriginal man, Dexter Daniels, both of the North Australian Workers Union, he demanded better pay and rations, and protection of the Aboriginal women. The group camped in the bed of the Victoria River and later moved to Daguragu, known to non-Aborigines as Wattie Creek. The Gurindji strike was to last nine years, the longest in Australian