Brothers in arms honour Indigenous spirit
FIVE Indigenous brothers Edgar, Arnold, Albert, Elliott and Eric Lockyer were among thousands of Aboriginal men who enlisted in WW2 in the hope of returning as equals to a country free of peril.
Having grown up on Mallina Station near Whim Creek, the brothers worked at several Pilbara pastoral stations including Mallina, Munda and Sherlock.
Every year, a service is held at the memorial site dedicated in 2006 at Whim Creek to remember the brothers and Indigenous men and women who have served in all wars. Their names and ranks are inscribed on plaques fastened to five boulders adorned with jars of faded plastic flowers.
StreetWise visited the site recently during a visit to nearby Balla Balla, just off North West Coastal Highway. Wanting to better understand the local indigenous contribution to Australia’s military effort, I returned to base wanting to find out more about the Lockyers.
Albert, Elliott and Eric enlisted in the army while the eldest brothers Arnold and Edgar joined the Royal Australian Air Force, which though illegal accepted non-Europeans to meet its manpower needs.
Arnold was shot down and captured by the Japanese in Indonesia on July 27, 1945, and Eric was killed in action in Borneo. Elliott watched his younger brother Eric die as he stormed a beach in Borneo on May 16, 1945, aged 21. Elliott was given permission to carry Eric’s body to a temporary burial place on Tarakan, Borneo. He was later reburied on the Malaysian island of Labuan.
A Kariyarra Ngarluma man with European heritage, Arnold died on August 21, 1945, the father of three sons aged 30. Tragically, the second son of six children of Horace Samuel and Sylvie Lockyer (nee Whalebone) was clubbed to death six days after the Japanese surrendered. The guards responsible for his murder were found guilty of war crimes.
Arnold is buried at Ambon Cemetery in Indonesia, his memorial stone positioned beside his brothers at the entrance to the Whim Creek Hotel.
Albert, Elliott and Edgar returned home. Albert died in 1991, aged 74; Elliott in 1995, aged 75; and Edgar in 1964, aged 50. The returned servicemen not only enlisted to gain citizenship rights at a time when Indigenous people were disadvantaged socially, economically and politically. They also fought for their country.
Yet they were not allowed to vote in the country they defended nor, in many places, enter a pub without a permit called a ‘dog pass’.
Century old
The Roebourne memorial obelisk was erected in 1920 to honour the men who enlisted and 22 killed at the front in WW1. The Governor took part in the ceremony, the memorial unveiled by the mother of one of the soldiers who was killed overseas.
In 1914, more than 179,000 men lived in WA. Over the next four years, 32,000 would enlist for service in the ‘Great War’.
There are 143 names on the Roebourne memorial and another 34 are listed on one face, with 17 marked as killed in action. Many of the prominent families of the early colonial period are named on the monument including the Withnells, Meares, Fisher, Forrest, Davis, Watson, Richardson, Paterson, Mackay and McRae.
