While the experience of Aboriginal men in the AIF is receiving increasing attention the experience of their families – particularly wives, mothers and sisters on the home front has to date been relatively neglected.

Aboriginal women’s stories are in many ways the same as those of non Indigenous women – but they are also different. The difference is created by the circumstances of Aboriginal life – lived in so many instances ‘under the Act’ and subject to restrictions on personal liberty and removal of children by the state. Not only this but allotments made to them from a soldier’s pay were in some cases made to a state Protection Board rather than to the woman herself.

Information about these women is not readily forthcoming but should not be impossible to piece together starting with service records, the most readily available source supplemented by other selected primary and secondary sources and…

Andrea Gerrard, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Tasmania, has been researching Tasmanian Aboriginal soldiers from WW1 for a number of years. The names of the 64 soldiers she has identified were published in the Hobart Mercury on 9th November, prior to Remembrance Day, 2012.

The results of her research were not available when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers for the AIF: The Indigenous response to World War One, was first published in 2011. However 48 of the names now made public by Mrs Gerrard were listed in this edition together with the names of a further seven men which do not appear in the Mercury list. What is exciting about Mrs Gerrard’s research is that it has enabled her to name an additional sixteen volunteers, including more members of the families of men mentioned in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers.

Mrs Gerrard’s list…