22/10/2025
Ms Camfoo what a story!
"At 90 years, Ms Camfoo offers an insight into life as an Aboriginal woman in the 20th century, from being displaced from her land and helping with the war effort without pay, to being unable to marry without a permit" * ABC News article 2022 about the now late Nellie Camfoo.
"Nellie Camfoo's days of riding horses may be over, but in her mind, she still calls herself "a cattle girl".
"Swinging her arm in the air to the rhythm of the rope she once held, she takes her mind back to a time when she mustered for cattle in the bush"
"Yeah!" she said, bouncing her now slender frame in the chair where she sits"
"Riding those horses, jumping off, chasing them cattle and pull them up, take them in the yard and brand him."
"At 90 years, Ms Camfoo offers an insight into life as an Aboriginal woman in the 20th century, from being displaced from her land and helping with the war effort without pay, to being unable to marry without a permit"
"She also danced for Australian prime ministers, advised on Indigenous issues and spent much of her life advocating for Aboriginal women"
"Her mind remains full of memories growing up her way and "the Mununga [whitefella] way" on Mainoru Station, in remote Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory""Born Nellie Martin in 1932, her early years were spent living a traditional life, traversing the land between the station and the coast on foot with her family, looking for bush tucker"
"She credits her family for teaching her about Aboriginal law and how to navigate two worlds"
"Ms Camfoo's father was an Aboriginal stockman at Mainoru station and, unlike other hostile stories in the area, the family had a positive experience living and working alongside its white owners"
"She worked long days as a ringer — roping bullocks and branding them — and when she wasn't outside, she was inside cooking or cleaning"
"It was here she met the love of her life, Tex Camfoo, a dashing head stockman she fondly remembers as her "old man"
"He taught a young Nellie how to break a horse and chase cattle""I'm thinking about my old man, my husband [and] how good he was"
"We had good fun in the bush, probably the best fun as stockmen on the cattle station," she said.
"But living close to white people in Mainoru came with its hardships""When government officials came to the station looking for "half caste" children to take during the era of the Stolen Generations, Ms Camfoo was protected by the colour of her skin"
"She witnessed children with fairer skin to hers taken and, decades on, finds it hard to talk about"
"White man take them and the kid was crying for aunty and uncle and everybody, well that's wrong," she said.
"We don't go along and take the white kid from Adelaide or Sydney or Canberra or wherever, we'll get shot from white people"
"Make me cry ... I'm old now but I've still got the [pain] inside me."
"Ms Camfoo said she'd seen a lot during her long life, including when war came to Australia"
"After Darwin was bombed by the Japanese, she was sent there to help with the rebuilding effort"
"Fluent in five Indigenous languages, she was tasked with communicating messages to Aboriginal tribes across the far north"
"Helping talk to the people and get all the language from other tribes and put them in English like we're talking now," Ms Camfoo said.
"Her domestic skills were also sought after Ms Camfoo stayed on in Darwin to support the army with cooking, washing and ironing"
"It was hard work, done for no pay"
"Even though I was in Darwin working [with] the army, World War II, no money, just for tucker. Well, that's wrong," she said.
"After working in Darwin, Ms Camfoo missed home and made her way back to Mainoru where her romance with Tex started to blossom"
"Son of a Rembarrnga woman and a Chinese saddler, Tex was removed from his family as a child and taken to a school for "half caste" children on Groote Eylandt"
"Before his death, he told anthropologist, Gillian Cowlishaw, his name growing up was Harry, but there were too many kids with the same name on the mission, so he was baptised Jimmy instead, after his father"
"As an adult he was nicknamed Texas to match his cowboy life and would later be deemed by the government to be a European by default, because of his Chinese ancestry""It meant he could go into a pub and freely drink alcohol with other white stockmen"
"But he couldn't marry Nellie without a permit"
"Under the Aboriginal Ordinance Act that governed Indigenous lives at the time, non-Aboriginal men faced a fine or jail time for being intimate with Aboriginal women"
"Marriage was also banned without permission from Native Affairs"
"Ms Camfoo said she was confused by the rules that dictated her early life"
"After waiting years for their marriage permit to come through, they were finally married in a church in Katherine"
"The nonagenarian still wears her wedding ring and said she hadn't forgotten the fight it took to be with her husband"
"Love is love ... you can't stop the love, white, black, Chinese or Indian or whatever," Ms Camfoo said.
"After getting married, Nellie and Tex Camfoo stayed and worked at Mainoru, but when the station sold in 1968 their lives were uprooted again"
"The station was sold to new American owners the same year that Aboriginal stockmen were granted equal pay in Australia"
"When the law changed, Rembarrnga stockman and their families were moved on from Mainoru, and forced to set up camp further north in Bulman"
"It's too hard to tell you the story about this Mainoru when white man selfish for that country and then Aboriginal we are selfish for our country because our ground is our ground,"she said.
"Ms Camfoo found herself a refugee on her own land and said the ordeal took its toll"
"Ms Camfoo with her husband continued to defy the odds in Bulman, securing government backing to set up a cattle station in the 1970's, however the venture folded within a decade"
"The couple share a large extended family that still live in Bulman, but they never went on to have any biological children"
"Ms Camfoo said she fell pregnant after getting married, but miscarried when she fell off a horse during a buck jumping accident"
"Ms Camfoo said some people on Jawoyn country regard her as an "Aboriginal queen" for her knowledge and authority, and wants the younger children to know their roots"
"When they are around me, the boys and girls, I just say 'number one, don't lose your culture'," she said.
"I want young people to learn. I want our way in the front, our law."
"Ms Camfoo said her spirit lives in the bush, and likes to get out on country whenever she can"
"Moving her body in the chair, as though she's ready to break out into a dance, the elder invites me out on country to dance with her"
"She tells me she wants the learning to work both ways"
"That's my law. I don't dance your rock and roll, I don't learn it," she said.
"You don't know my dancing as well because you have to get used to it, like how to move your foot and knee."I've done all the jobs that I am proud of and learning, but white man not much learning my language, my law, but I still tell them."
"Black and white they are one, we are one, you and me," Ms Camfoo said.
"We're brothers and sisters … we've got different skin, but we've got the same blood."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-21/nellie-camfoo-elder-northern-teritory/101301000
