AustLit
Melissa Lucashenko is an award-winning novelist who lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. She was born and grew up in Brisbane. After working as a barmaid, delivery driver and karate instructor, Melissa received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University, graduating in 1990.
Her writing explores the stories and passions of ordinary Australians with particular reference to Aboriginal people and others living around the margins of the first world. Melissa has been an independent screenplay assessor for Screen NSW and Screen Tasmania, and a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council.
A versatile and prolific author, she has published (and won prizes for) young adult novels, contemporary literary fiction, and non-fiction.
Among her awards for writing are the Dobbie Prize, the Prize for Indigenous Writing (Victorian Premier's Literary Awards), and the Queensland Literary Award (Fiction Book Award). She has been shortlisted and longlisted for the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin, the Aurealis Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. In 2013, her non-fiction essay 'Sinking Below Sight' won her a Walkley Award. In 2019, her novel Too Much Lip, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
She is also a regular contributor to Griffith Review.
Rory O'Connor is the son of Terrance Michael O'Connor and Patricia O'Connor. The daughter of Edith Yuke and granddaughter of Jenny Graham, Patricia was instrumental in the establishment of the Yugambeh Museum.
Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Queensland, a Master of Laws from the Queensland University of Technology and was enrolled in the PhD program at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University.
Watson was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1999. She has worked for Legal Aid Queensland, the National Native Title Tribunal and the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. Her area of research is the legal recognition of Indigenous relationships with land. A former editor of the Indigenous Law Bulletin and former columnist for the National Indigenous Times, she joined Tracker magazine as a monthly columnist in 2011. she has been involved in the Indigenous Mentoring Program at the New South Wales Writers Centre and the First Nations of Australia Writers Network.
She has published extensively on issues relating to Indigenous Australians and the law, especially in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention, to issues of land ownership and connection to country, and the particular difficulties facing Aboriginal women.
In 2016, she was appointed to the University of Sydney Law School.
As of 2017, Watson has published one novel, The Boundary. An earlier novel, Return of the Clever Man, was shortlisted for the David Unaipon Award in 2007, but has not yet been published.
She is the daughter of writer and activist Sam Watson and sister of Samuel Wagan Watson.
Jenny Fraser works at the nexus of art, film-making and new technologies as a new media artist. Her work is exhibited both nationally and internationally, including 'cultural copy' at the Fowler Museum in San Francisco and Interactiva01 and Interactive03: biennales at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico.
Fraser founded and curates cyberTribe, an Indigenous online Gallery that aims to encourage the production and exhibition of Indigenous Art with a focus on the digital. She was the first Aboriginal curator to present a Triennial exhibition in Australia and has also been artist-in-residence in diverse places, including remote communities in the Northern Territory, the Rocky Mountains in Banff and Brisbane, Queensland.
Maddee Clark is a Melbourne-based Yugambeh writer and editor of Un Magazine. In 2018, they were undertaking a PhD on Indigenous Futurism and race at the University of Melbourne.
Lindsay Sandy was born on the banks of the Richmond River, Wiangaree, in northern New South Wales. He was known as Billy to his family.
Maria Van Neerven-Currie is a Library technician at Queensland University of Technology.
Les Yuke was employed as a fencer and played Rugby League before he enlisted in the army during World War II.
Sam Levinge served in the 15th Australian Infantry Battalion and the 9th Australian Mobile Ambulance Convoy during World War II. He was the youngest of six brothers who enlisted; one of his brothers who served in World War II was Gilbert Levinge (q.v.).
Professional fisherman, Noel Browning served with the Australian Army in World War II. Much of his work was for the Australian Supply Corp, skippering barges and carriers under fifty feet through the Pacific Islands, to provide supplies and transport for troops.
Gilbert Levinge was a Rat of Tobruk and a volunteer for service in the Second World War. He was decorated with the 1939-1945 Star, the Africa Star with the 8th Army Clasp, the Pacific Star and other medals. Levinge married a woman named Edna upon his return from military service.
The brother of Sam Levinge (q.v.), Gilbert and Sam were two of six brothers who enlisted to serve in World War II.
Mary Ball lived in Southport, married a returned soldier from The Great War and worked in the RSL. Mary Ball was made a life member of the RSL in 1958 for her work over three decades. Mary had two sons named Colin and Dick.
Lisa Buxton an Aboriginal Education Advisor in the Eastern Region of the Catholic Education Office, Sydney. She works as an education consultant and writes for Iscariot Media and is completing her Master of Philosophy in Education at the University of Notre Dame, Australia.
Billy Hatton was the Dolly and Pompey Hatton. He joined the AIF in 1940 and served overseas with the 25th Battalion.
