Brian Manning recalls the Wave Hill walk-off, 2007

Educational value

• This is a recording of someone directly involved in helping to organise and support the Wave Hill walk-off, a strike that grew into an unprecedented seven-year protest action by the Gurindji people. About 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off the Wave Hill station in late August 1966, declaring that they would not return until they received the same pay as non-Indigenous stockmen. The protest then developed into a land rights campaign.
• In 1966, more than 4,000 Indigenous people were living on pastoral stations in the NT but those who were employed were often paid only about a quarter the rate white workers received, and their housing and general living conditions were extremely poor. The Wave Hill walk-off was prompted by such discriminatory treatment from the UK-based company Vestey, which held a long-term lease over the Wave Hill station.
• In this recording, Manning (1932-) outlines the importance to the Gurindji people of hearing promises of support if they went ahead with strike action at Wave Hill. He describes how the pastoralists had reacted on previous occasions when strike action was taken, the Gurindji having been virtually 'starved back to work'.
• The recording gives a sense of the joy of the strikers when Manning's truck arrived with food supplies at their temporary camp on the Victoria River, about 600 km south of Darwin. Poor communications meant that the arrival of the truck, after a 16-hour journey over rough roads, was the first time the protesters realised they had outside backing.
• Manning, a founding member of the NT Council of Aboriginal Rights, highlights the key role it played, along with the North Australia Workers' Union, in campaigning for equal pay for Indigenous workers. When he drove from Darwin to make the first food delivery to the Wave Hill strikers, Manning was accompanied by the Council's vice-president Robert Tudawali (1929?-67) and by Dexter Daniels (c1940-97), the Union's Indigenous organiser.
• Manning also describes how support for the Wave Hill strikers 'rolled in from all round the countryside' after the initial delivery of food. Trade unions, churches and student groups helped sustain the protest by providing food and other aid, such as water pumps and power generators. They also raised funds so the Gurindji leader Vincent Lingiari (1908-88) and others could travel around Australia to gain publicity.

Year level

4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12

Topics Aboriginal peoples Aboriginal land rights Cattle industry Working conditions Trade unions Strikes