1940s

Koori orators like Jack Patten and Bill Ferguson speak regularly at the Domain on Aboriginal and workers rights.

In the 1940s Elsa Dixon becomes the first Aboriginal woman to gain her pilot's license.

Pearl Gibbs gives a talk on radio, the first time an Aboriginal person has given a scripted address on a state radio network. (Horner p. 12)

The Housing Commission begins building houses throughout the metropolitan region. In 1969, Aboriginal Housing, formerly managed by the Aborigines Welfare Board is amalgamated with the Housing Commission’s housing program. (Morgan, p. 72)

Doretta Williams from Cowra, after an adolescence in the Cootamundra Home, is working in domestic service in North Sydney. She gives birth to Eileen Williams. Her baby is removed from her at three weeks and taken to the Bomaderry Infants home, and re-named Joy Williams. (Read 2008)

At the cemetery at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Newtown, is an obelisk erected in tribute to the Aboriginal people buried in the cemetery. It reads ‘Erected by the Ranger’s League of New South Wales at the inspiration of the late Aldwin J. S. Stanton in memory of Mogo, Perry, Tommy and other Aborigines buried in this cemetery, and as a tribute to the whole of the Aboriginal race. Mogo was a Koori from the Upper McCleay River and is buried in what was known as ‘Koori Corner’ of the cemetery, on the Lennox Street side. His grave was originally decorated with shells taken from an Aboriginal midden at Pittwater. The other remains have been identified as belonging to Perry who died in 1849 aged 76. Wandalina, died in 1960, while Tommy has no details. (Hinkson and Harris, p. 91)

Koori families are living, as are others, among the boat-wrecking and boat building businesses on the waterfront in Cook St, Glebe Point.

Chicka Dixon comes to Sydney from the south coast. He recalls, ‘It was the big thing to come for young Aboriginal people, I was 17. Mum used to tell him, ‘Oh don’t fight with the manager Chicka. He’ll cut off our rations'. Everyone said go to Redfern. Chicka goes on, ‘There were two lots of Blacks living in Sydney then, in La Perouse, the La Pa [La Perouse] people and the Redfern people. The La Pa people were mainly south coast, and Redfern were all the western blackfellas’. According to Plater, ‘there was a half-baked animosity between the two settlements’. Plater, pp. 43, 122-123. (V12, ‘Working life in Redfern’)

There are about 158 factories, most employing Koori people, in the Redfern/Alexandria region. Chicka Madden works in Redfern. (V12, ‘Working life in Redfern’)

Merv Maynard in his first season, rides eight winners. (Maynard 2002 p. 85)

Mum Shirl is living in Albion Way, Surry Hills. In 1985 she recalls other Koori people living in the same area - the Lalors in number 7 Caroline Street. Daisy Robinson, Granny Robinson, and Granny Waters all lived in number 34, 35 and 38 Caroline Street. (Sykes p. 33)