From Coombes to Coombs: Reflections on the Pitjantjara outstation movement
From Coombes to Coombs: Reflections on the Pitjantjara outstation movement Book Section
Experiments in Self-Determination
- Author(s): Edwards, Bill
- Secondary Author(s): Peterson, Nicolas, Myers, Fred
- Published: 2016
- Publisher: ANU Press
- ISBN: 9781925022902
Abstract: In September 1957, nearing the end of my studies at the University of Melbourne, I met the Reverend Victor Coombes, general secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, to discuss the possibility of serving on a north Queensland Gulf mission. What motivated my interest in Aboriginal missions in an era when the more exotic overseas missions such as in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Korea received more attention? Growing up in a very small country town in the Wimmera region of Victoria in the 1930s, I had little knowledge of Aboriginal people and their history. Monuments on nearby roads bearing the words ‘Major Mitchell passed by here’ suggested that this was the beginning of history. A rare meeting with an Aboriginal person was when a ‘swagman’ passed through my hometown of Lubeck. In return for the food my parents gave him, he cut firewood and gave my father an incised boomerang—now one of my prized possessions.
- Urls: https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p331981/pdf/book.pdf
- Publisher Location: Canberra