Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an important project commemorating Aboriginal diggers from the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury in my seat of Macquarie. A collaborative effort by Mountains Outreach Community Service, Blue Mountains People for Reconciliation, ANTAR and local Aboriginal families and groups has produced a book and exhibition, Remembering the Forgotten, currently at Hawkesbury Library. I commend these groups on seeking recognition for Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri men who served. There are still many gaps in what we know about the history of Indigenous Australians in our defence forces, and a great many individual stories were forgotten for a time—some lost for ever but others able to be recovered.

The exhibition focuses on the World War I service of the descendants of Maria and Robert Lock. Maria was the daughter of Dharug elder Yarramundi. The exhibition covers 11 members of the wider Lock family, including Private William 'Billy' Hughes, who shared a name with the Prime Minister at the time. The project received funding from the Department of Veterans' Affairs Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program. I think we need to recognise that the work of local community groups like these, as we have seen here, will continue to add to the efforts of the Australian War Memorial and others in uncovering incredible accounts of service, bravery and sacrifice by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who served in every conflict from colonial forces before Federation through to recent peacekeeping missions.