ABORIGINAL elder Uncle Ray Peckham was just eight years old when the first Aborigines Progressive Association meeting was held at Dubbo but it would be 10 more years before he truly understood what it meant.
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Yesterday the son of Tom Peckham took the microphone to reflect on the history of the association through which his father and other members had strived to improve their people’s lives.
Uncle Ray was one of the special guests at the launch of an exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary of the association’s first Dubbo meeting.
The 84-year-old has a wealth of knowledge.
Growing up on the Talbragar Reserve, Uncle Ray went to the mission school and “didn’t know anything about discrimination out there”.
It wasn’t until he experienced basic inequality after entering the workforce - with a full-time wage just above A£3 a week and had access denied to the pub when with his “white mates” - that he began to understand what his father and others in the association had been fighting for.
In the early 1950s Uncle Ray moved to Sydney where he joined forces with association active member Pearl Gibbs and became involved with the movement.
Memories of the past went hand-in-hand yesterday with the canvas prints of the exhibition, presented by Dubbo City Council.
Council Aboriginal liaison officer and exhibition co-ordinator Grace Toomey said digitised photos from the personal albums of Pearl Gibbs were sent from the State Library of NSW.
“The State Library is relying on the likes of Uncle Ray to identify the previously unknown faces,” Ms Toomey said.
“I picked Uncle Ray from the piles of photographs instantly and am so glad he can be part of this anniversary exhibition to tell the story from a first-hand perspective.”
A copy of Pearl Gibbs’s photo album is available for viewing at the library.
The exhibition will run until July 27 at the Macquarie Regional Library and Ms Toomey said she hoped both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people went to see it.
“A lot of Aboriginal people, including myself, did not know the detail of this association,” she said.
It was important to her, not just as the great-granddaughter of association member George Carr, but also for the “significance of the whole event”.
“I don’t think the Dubbo community realises the first meeting in 1937 was the catalyst for the Freedom Rides, the referendum, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and native title,” Ms Toomey said.
