Wave Hill Walk-Off Banners

It’s 50 years this weekend since the famous Wave Hill walk-off hit the headlines beyond distant Gurindji Country. It’s also 59 years since it actually started. But would any of those Down South have known about events nine years earlier if one Gough Whitlam had not headed North and supplied photographer Mervyn Bishop with his most famous image of the PM pouring sand/soil into walk-off leader Vincent Lingiari’s hands?

For few Australians know anything about the pioneering walk-off 20 year earlier by Marrngu stockmen and their families in the Pilbara. It’s 80th anniversary falls on May 1st next year. And I only now about it because the late Nyaparu William Gardiner painted the heroes of that strike, and I had the good fortune to see a restored version of the 1987 documentary film, ‘How the West Was Lost’ which told the story that started in 1946 when some of the strikers were still around.

Now, a sighnificant new exhibition commemorating the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-off has opened at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Old Parliament House, Canberra. It features Gurindji Freedom Banners, ‘Mumkurla-nginyi-ma parrngalinyparla – From the darkness into the light’, uniting all ten hand-painted banners for the first time in years, telling the story of a pivotal moment in the Aboriginal land rights movement.

The exhibition was developed by Midpul Art Gallery at Charles Darwin University in partnership with Karungkarni Art and Culture, and tells the story of the Gurindji and neighbouring peoples, who on 23 August 1966 – led by Vincent Lingiari – walked off the Vestey Empire’s Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. Their demands for fair working conditions and the return of their traditional lands sparked an eventual shift, leading to Whitlam’s first hand-back of Aboriginal land on 16 August 1975 and paving the way for the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

The Museum’s Senior Curator, Anne-Marie Condé says the exhibition celebrates a legacy of resistance, justice and connection to Country. “These hand-painted textile banners were created in 2000 to tell the community’s own account of the historic struggle to reclaim their traditional lands. Many of the 35 Gurindji people involved in the banner-making project were participants in the walk-of”.

She continued, “At some stage, one banner – Ngumpittu nguwula junypa wanyjarnana (Two young men dancing) – went missing from the collection. In July, artists and community members came together in Daguragu and Kalkarindji and worked to reproduce the missing banner. This recreation allowed the collection to be restored and created a new opportunity for younger generations to engage with the Wave Hill Walk-off story”.

The recreation of Ngumpittu nguwula junypa wanyjarnana was made possible with the support of MoAD. And the Gurindji Freedom Banners: ‘Mumkurla-nginyi-ma parrngalinyparla – From the darkness into the light’ is free to visit at MoAD until late 2026.

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