An Extraordinary Woman

Avy Curley was an ambassador for Indigenous Australia. She died earlier this year. Alan Holman tells her story.

By any standard, Avy Curley lived an extraordinary life and one worth noting.

Born in 1912, she married in 1927, mothered 18 children, did a lot for her community, then, in 1980, received the Medal of the Order of Australia.

Add to that the following: amazing fundraiser for the Royal Flying Doctor Service; founder of the Bundi Club (where Aboriginal people still meet, serve and learn); and proficient in Indigenous artwork. She is also the “mother” of Karalundi Aboriginal Education Centre in outback Western Australia, which for more than 50 years has been a centre of Aboriginal education in the state.

Avy’s grandfathers—one a Scot, the other Irish—were convicts; their wives were both Aborigines. Avy’s parents— Charlie and Bessie Cameron—were members of the Yamatji people who lived and worked on cattle stations and in communities near Geraldton, Western Australia.

Despite challenges in her life, Avy was fortunate, for Charlie was a man with strong religious convictions. He often worked in the courts, assisting in cases involving his people.

“My father adopted both cultures with pride,” recalled Avy. “He was a staunch Church of England man, who brought us up in the church teachings and principles, living by Aboriginal lore and respecting that. People came to him from all walks of life, seeking help in one way or another for different things; he never turned anyone away. He believed in justice—that everyone should be treated as equal no matter their colour.”

Importantly, Charlie insisted that Avy read the newspaper to him each day. His determined preoccupation with education led to clashes with authorities, who didn’t believe Aborigines were worth the trouble. But his mindset resulted in Avy being enrolled in the Mullewa State School—the first Aborigine to do so.

It was a time of rigorously applied segregation. Racism was the norm in Avy’s early years, giving a spark to her fiery passion for education, equality and justice later in life.

“Education is the only way,” she once said. “I fought a long time, getting inspiration from my father to have our children allowed into schools, and finally won.”

Avy’s life was, in some ways, a rollercoaster ride. The highs were education and learning, with a loving and supportive family who always had some sort of roof over their heads. Despite the closeness of her extended family, Avy was in some ways doomed to follow a well-worn path of tradition; that girls were expected to accept a secondary role in life.

“My only regret is I had to leave school to get married, as my first baby was on the way. I was 14; still a child myself,” she reflected.

She experienced and witnessed harsh initiations, learned tribal customs, traditional medicine and food gathering.

She recalled overhearing, as an impressionable young girl, conversations in which her father and his fellow initiates openly discussed the horrors of cannibalism.

She also remembered, with unusual clarity, the tribal customs relating to death and burial. “Funerals have a deeper cultural aspect or meaning for Aborigines and, indeed, other indigenous races. For the Aborigine, it goes back to the time we refer to as the Dreamtime.”

She married George Curley in 1927. He worked around the Yalgoo area.

After a simple wedding, for many years they struggled to make ends meet.

One way of earning money was “blowing” for gold. The technique Avy used was to lay on her side in a dry river bed, move stones away from a potential strike and gently blow the sand away. The resulting specks paid for the essentials of life. Her arduous efforts were greatly improved when her brother, Leedham, helped out.

“He put pieces of board and tin together and made a dry blower, which was a relief, and an easier way to find gold than being on your hands and knees in the creek, blowing out potholes.”

Her early married life was extremely harsh as George struggled to maintain regular employment as a stockman. He worked on 22 stations, the jobs ranging from mustering and shearers’ cook to horse-breaker and fencing. Home was chaff bags sewn together, some sheets of corrugated iron and forked mulga sticks as a frame.

“The hardships of everyday life for Aborigines in those days seemed like the hardest times we could remember,”

she lamented. After losing her second child to measles, Avy recalled, “I don’t know how long I cried. It took a long time to fully understand the meaning and acceptance of my baby’s passing, but life had to go on.”

By 1940, Avy had had enough of being a second-class citizen. The catalyst was a town curfew. The township of Mount Magnet had imposed a time limit on Aborigines visiting the township.

This meant that after 6 pm, they were not permitted on the streets, even if they needed food from a shop. One evening, in town after sunset, with a baby on her hip, and with George and some 20 friends and family in tow, she marched in protest down the main street of the town.

“We just strolled along at a leisurely pace,” she said. “Other white friends joined the group. It was a day to be remembered for all Aborigines, as they made their first stand for justice.

“I felt proud to have been there to lead them down the street,” she said.

In an era when protests were unheard of, this was an astonishing event. They were thrown into the town gaol and later fined £2 each for loitering. Avy wrote, many years later, “It was after this protest march that I started to work in earnest for my people.”

Avy’s brother, Leedham, was sometimes an embarrassment to his family, but when he became a Christian, his life changed. Through her reformed brother, Avy and George met Pastor Dudley Vaughan, then ministering to the Geraldton Seventh-day Adventist Church and whose parish included Meekatharra and the Upper Murchison region. He had an enlightened understanding of the plight of the Aboriginal people. In 1952, after completing a Bible correspondence course and through personal contact with the Seventh- day Adventist Church, Avy and George became members of the church.

After one of Pastor Vaughan’s meetings, she approached him with a confronting statement: “It’s fine for you to do all this, but what are you doing for us Aboriginal people?”

She was talking to the right person.

Her challenging comment triggered a response in Vaughan that led to the purchase of “Crystal Brook,” a farming property some 55 kilometres north of Meekatharra. This became Crystal Brook Mission and, after a year of operation, was renamed “Karalundi,”

the local word for “clear water” (see box, next page).

In April 1954, Avy and George joined volunteer builders as the mission station took shape. Along with other Aborigines and staff from the church’s administration in Western Australia, they constructed new buildings and transported in tattered buildings from other locations. George helped dig out the mission’s first swimming pool.

The Bundi Club, one of Avy’s community concepts, now well known in the district for its community welfare programs, grew out of a Bible-study group held in Avy’s home. As the numbers increased, the group moved into the Meekatharra court house.

Today the Bundi Club provides certificate courses in cooking, dressmaking, handcrafts and trades, such as bricklaying. The Bundi Club bus was another before-its-time innovation.

This vehicle is used for a variety of purposes, taking children to school or outings, providing “meals-on-wheels”

to schoolchildren (113 lunches on one day) and shopping trips for pensioners.

In 1984, more deeply involved in her work for the Aboriginal people, Avy was appointed chairperson of the Aboriginal Housing Board’s State Housing Commission (WA). She was already an Aboriginal legal aid field officer. This resulted in a surge of help from Government sources in the way of Aboriginal rights and financial aid. “My people need all this help because of all the years they’ve missed out,” she said.

“At work, part of my job was straightening things out for Aboriginal people who have been called to court and require legal assistance. As a legal aid field officer, it was sad to see the people who turn up in court who I have to represent. Most of these cases had to do with alcohol.”

In her “spare time,” she carved emu eggs. Her handicrafts have been presented to royalty. In 1954, she gave a carved emu egg to Queen Elizabeth, repeating the gesture for Prince Charles 25 years later.

“I started carving emu eggs, which became my biggest income—much more money than those gold prospecting days,” she explained. “I taught myself how to paint and do all sorts of Aboriginal crafts, which seemed to come naturally to me. I wasn’t too badly off then, as I was receiving family benefits, which helped me to keep my children in school.

“But I struggled to keep my family together,” she added, “as this was the most important thing. The children must have roots and learn to be proud of their heritage—proud to be Aboriginal.”

A crowning of her career came in 1980, when she received the Order of Australia in recognition of her services to her community, in particular, the Bundi Club.

Avy Curley was an outstanding example of how a good life can be made from little else than love and determination. And until she died earlier this year, she continued to serve her family, her people and community.

Today, thousands of Aborigines, along with the rest of the Australian community, owe and honour her for her tireless commitment to making life better for all Australians.

Alan Holman is the author of The Girl Who Talked to the Stars and The Snake Birds, both biographical stories of Indigenous Australians.

Karalundi: Walking and Learning

Karalundi came into existence in 1954 as an Aboriginal boarding school run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Western Australia.

It was begun after its founder Pastor Dudley Vaughan was challenged to begin such a work by Avy Curley. The property is some 55 kilometres north of Meekatharra.

The school served the Murchison, Upper Gascoyne, Pilbara and Western Desert regions. Classes began in September 1954, with a focus on literacy, numeracy and practical skills.

During its early years of operation, Karalundi was rated by the WA Department of Education as a “most efficient establishment” and commended for the “relatively high standard of attainment” by students.

Karalundi was closed in September 1974 in a government move to phase out church involvement in indigenous affairs. The property was sold into private hands and operated as a farm-stay enterprise for 12 years.

In the early 1980s, many past students came to recognise that under the state system, their children’s education was inferior to their own. These parents, in the spirit of self-determination, lobbied the state government for Karalundi to reopen as an independent parent-controlled Christian Aboriginal boarding school, where children would be educated away from the problems associated with alcohol abuse and gain an education focusing on practical life skills, as well as literacy and numeracy. The advocacy group was supported by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and, in August 1986, Karalundi was reopened as such.

Karalundi has recently extended its secondary program to include Years 11 and 12 and is recognised as one of the leading schools in Aboriginal education in Western Australia. And despite its academic success, Karalundi has never lost sight of its founding vision, its student continuing to participate in its spiritual aspects.

For more information, contact:

Karalundi Aboriginal Education Community
PMB 6 Meekatharra WA 6642
Email: enquiries [at] karalundi.wa.edu.au
Phone: 08 9981 2000 Fax: 08 99812 801

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