00:02Walking in the footsteps of giants, almost a thousand people retracing the route of the Wave Hill walk-off that
00:09was led by the Gurindji stockman Vincent Lingiari, who nine years later had that handful of sand poured into his
00:15hands by then PM Gough Whitlam.
00:17If I could put into words just how commanding he was as a person, he had an aura about him.
00:24You just knew he was in charge. He didn't have to say anything. He would gesture or he would wave
00:29a hand and he was just respected.
00:33Among the crowd, elders like George Edwards, who was a young boy in 1966 and grew up around those Riverside
00:40campsites.
00:41I walk with my family and I remember I was carrying my gramophone. My father bought me.
00:48Today is a special day for all of us.
00:51The Aboriginal workers on Wave Hill were paid meagre wages, mostly rations of flour, sugar and tea, and lived in
00:58tin humpies.
00:59Their demands for better conditions were supported by the union movement and morphed into a demand for land of their
01:06own so they could work for themselves.
01:08We are the silent achievers, and I believe that. We do it for our people, we do it for our
01:15community, and it's what makes us so proud of who we are.
01:22In their long years of living in camps, the people were supported by food drops trucked in by the unionists.
01:29Kerry Gibbs, then just 14, was one of the truckers, today joining the march in a Bedford truck, like those
01:36used in the 60s.
01:38We had flour, tea, beef. In realistic terms, had it have not been for that food, the station would have
01:48broken them. And that's the truth of the matter.
01:52They were not broken, and the Gurindji today are proud of their role in bringing about the Land Rights Act,
01:58about half the land mass of the NT today legally recognised as Aboriginal land.
02:03Thank you very much.
