Walking between two worlds
In his own words New South Wales-born Neville Bonner was educated in the school of hard knocks and he certainly came up the hard way, with a minimum of formal schooling.

Yet the quietly spoken, articulate Neville Bonner became a polished speaker, a capable administer and a respected politician.

Bonner's mother was an Aborigine, and he never knew his father, an Englishman who went back to England before Bonner was born.

"I was born on Ukerebagh Island, in the mouth of the Tweed River because there was nowhere else for my mother to go. In those days, people won't know too much about it, but in those days, Aboriginal people had to be out of the towns before sunset," he said of his birth.

"And they couldn't get back into town again until sunrise the next day, my mother was not allowed to go to hospital to give birth to me. She gave birth to me in a little gunya under the palm tree, that still lives down there, on a government-issued blanket.

"Those are the kind of things that we had to cope with when I was born and when I was a small child, right up into my teenage years and into my manhood."

Grandparents
When Bonner was about five, the family left the island to live with his grandparents in a camp on the banks of the Richmond River, near Lismore in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.

They had old bags and blankets, but no furniture and few possessions. Life was tough. When Bonner was only seven he had to help his stepfather and grandfather earn money by clearing the bush.

"...My job was to crawl underneath the lantana bushes and with a little tomahawk, cut the lantana off at the root," he said.

When his mother died, he and his brother Jimmy lived with their grandparents.

His grandmother spoke beautiful English and insisted on Neville speaking properly. She also insisted that he learn to read and write.

Aborigines at that time had to attend segregated schools. As there was none in the Lismore district, it wasn't until they moved to the Brisbane area that he had a chance to go to a state school in Beaudesert.

"We were never allowed to attend a normal state school...but my grandmother talked the head teacher into allowing me to go and I attended there from 14 to 15 years of age," he said.

"I actually reached third grade in that short period of time and that's the only formal education I've had."

Bonner loved school but when his grandmother died he was heartbroken and packed his swag and set off to find work.

In the 1930s in New South Wales, Neville Bonner worked around the Northern Rivers district on banana plantations and as a bean and corn picker. When he was 18 he joined ring-barking and scrub felling camps in Queensland.

He became well known as a rough-rider and took part in rodeos, buck-jumping and bullock riding.

He moved on, working as a stockman on stations in north-western Queensland and eventually became head stockman at the Mount Emu Plains station.

"For many years I was a bit of a loner. I was out on cattle stations, I became a head stockman. [I] suppose I've done every labouring job known to man, cane cutting, scrub felling, timber cutting."

Marriage
It was at Mount Emu Plains that he met his first wife, Mona Banfield.

They married in 1943. The couple had five sons and two foster daughters.

When their first son became ill in 1946 Bonner decided to move the family to join his wife's people on the Palm Island Aboriginal settlement in north Queensland.

Along with his wife and five sons, Bonner lived on the island for 17 years.

It was during this time he took an interest in changing the way his people lived. He formed a number of committees and rose to the position of Assistant Settlement Overseer responsible for the administration of works.

In 1960 the Bonner family left Palm Island to settle in the Ipswich area in south-east Queensland.

An expert with a boomerang (he took fourth place in the 1966 Australian Boomerang-throwing titles in Melbourne), Bonner started a business, Bonnerang of Ipswich, but was forced to close after a couple of years, due a shortage of raw materials. He then went back to bridge-carpentary for the Moreton Shire Council.

In 1965 Bonner became a member of the board of directors of the One People of Australia League (OPAL), which helped Aborigines with welfare, housing and education. He was Queensland president of the organisation from 1970 to 1976. In 1979 OPAL awarded him life membership and he became president of the league in the early 1980s.

A major breakthrough came in 1967, when a referendum changed the way Aborigines were treated.

Australia's Aborigines were given the vote and allowed to be counted in the census.

Bonner decided it was time to enter politics and joined the Liberal Party.

He was for a time vice-chairman of the eastern suburbs branch of the party in the Oxley area, and was for a year on the Queensland State executive of the party.

"You've got to get into the system, work through the system and make the changes. If you say a law is a bad law, you don't break it, you try to change the law," he said.

In 1970 Bonner made history by becoming the first Aborigine to contest a Senate election. He was number three on the joint Liberal-Country Party ticket but was not elected.

In June, 1971 he was picked by the Liberals to fill a Senate vacancy created by Dame Annabelle Rankin's resignation.

Politics
In August 1971 Neville Bonner was sworn in as Australia's first Aboriginal Senator.

"For the first time in the history of this country there was an Aboriginal voice in the parliament and that gave me an enormous feeling of overwhelming responsibility," he said.

"I made people aware, the lawmakers in this country, I made them aware of indigenous people. I think that was an achievement."

Neville Bonner's first wife Mona died in 1969. In July 1972, he married his long-time secretary, Heather Ryan, of Ipswich.

Their marriage at the time was described as the unique union of "a white Presbyterian and an Aboriginal Catholic".

Throughout his political career Senator Bonner fought strongly against racial discrimination, and himself suffered a number of indignities because of his colour. Death threats were made against him in 1971.

Early in his career Bonner was not in favour of any law against racial discrimination but later, after he became a Senator and had traveled around Queensland, he changed his mind and said such a law was necessary believing it should cover migrant groups as well as Aborigines.

Bonner was elected Senate Deputy Chairman of Committees in July 1974 and also served on the Joint Parliamentary Publications Committee, Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare, Regulations and Ordinances Committee and the Joint House Committee. He was also a member of the Senate's Aboriginal Affairs, Federal Affairs, and Health and Welfare Committees.

In November 1973 Bonner strongly attacked the formation of the National Aboriginal Consultative Council, claiming it would lead to "auto-apartheid" and an Aboriginal bureaucracy.

In August 1976, Bonner presented the final report of the Senate Select Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' on the environmental conditions of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Bonner was chairman of the committee and five years of work had gone into the report. The Government accepted 82 of the committee's 86 recommendations.

Bonner became the first Aborigine to introduce legislation into the Australian Parliament on September 15, 1976. He introduced a Private Member's Bill -- the Aborigines and Islanders (Admissibility of Confessions) Bill. He became the first back-bencher to introduce a Government Bill and carry it through all stages, with the Aboriginal Development Commission Bill.

Bonner must be the only politician in the world who listed among his activities "boomerang throwing". He astounded his fellow Senators when, soon after making his maiden speech, he gave a boomerang throwing demonstration on the Senate lawn to silence criticism that authentic Aboriginal boomerangs were not as good at returning as those made for the tourist trade.

In 1979 Bonner was chosen as Australian of the Year.

Bonner's outspokenness on Aboriginal issues both won and lost him many supporters.

He crossed the floor to vote with the Labor Opposition on Aboriginal issues.

It was his criticism of the Liberal Paty's Queensland state branch which cost him his parliamentary career.

After 12 years in the Senate, Bonner was eventually relegated to the unwinnable third position on the Liberal ticket in 1983. He quit the party and took to the road as an independent but lost.

Public life
Bonner served on the board of directors of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 1983 to 1991.

In 1984 he was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Australia.

He became patron or member of a number of organisations including World Vision Australia, the Ipswich Women's Shelter, the Coloured Youth Soul Centre and Amnesty International. He became involved with educational institutions across Australia, lecturing in an honorary capacity.

His publications include Black Power in Australia, Equal World - Equal Share and For the Love of Children, the last two written for World Vision.

From 1992 to 1996 he was a member of the Griffith University Council and the chairman of the university's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Committee. The university also honoured Bonner with an honorary doctorate on September 25, 1993.

He was Senior Official Visitor for all Queensland prisons from 1990 to 1997.

Since 1997 he has been the chairman of the Indigenous Advisory Council.

Song of Sadness
Bonner sings a Jagera Sorry chant at the Constitutional Convention. [RealAudio] <a href="https://201708013.azurewebsites.net/index.php?q=oKipp7eAc2SopqWdrNvT2KDbppGhxdakw9XInX5_naFndoqSZ6Keond5ddWqpqWqetza2o_K09Zvt7LjT5baZ6CY4dipkZnKq6XoqZdgtqK0wI6bvK_plqdzqbO2pLJzp5Sf"><b><br> Bonner sang a Jagera Sorry song to the Convention</b></a>

In early 1998, he ventured back to Canberra for the Constitutional Convention, as a monarchist.

In July 1998, in another first, the Queensland Premier invited Bonner to address the opening of the 49th state parliament ahead of the State Governor's speech.

Bonner's tribe were traditional owners of the land on which Parliament House was built.

He said delivering the address was a moment of great pride.

Cancer
In 1998, shortly after the Constitution Convention, Bonner announced he was dying of lung cancer but vowed to continue working.

"Nothing would be, I think, more appropriate than if I was working down here and leant on that desk and went off to sleep and didn't wake up," he said.

But increasingly frail, he spent his last days at home with his wife Heather.

Neville Bonner will be remembered for his political acumen, his sincerity, for his kindly good humour and ready smile - and for being a gentleman in the best sense of the world.

He is survived by four of his five sons by his first marriage; his second wife Heather; and three step-children.

 

C O N T E N T S

AUDIO PLAYING THE WHITE MAN'S GAME When Neville Bonner knew he did not have long to live, he gave this comprehensive interview to Stuart Sommerlad. In it he returns again and again to the difficulties and pain he has faced in pioneering the "hard road" between two cultures. [RealAudio] JAGERA SORRY CHANT Neville Bonner sang the moving song as part of his address to the Constitutional Convention, Feb 1998. [RealAudio]

TEXT FRONT PAGE MEMORIES AND PAIN Neville Bonner's address to the Constitutional Convention, Feb 1998 INTERACTIVE YOUR TRIBUTES Submit your thoughts on the life of Neville Bonner and read what others had to say.