A leader in establishing services for Dandenong’s Aboriginal community has been added to the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll.
Barbara Walker, who died in 2012, was among 10 inductees at a ceremony in Melbourne on Wednesday 30 November.
The Honour Roll celebrates the wide ranging achievements of Aboriginal people, past and present, has been running for six years and is on permanent display in the Victorian Parliament.
Mrs Walker’s involvement with welfare and education services, including promoting early childhood education, contributed significantly to the lives of those in her community.
The Wemba Wemba Elder was born in 1927 in Barham, New South Wales.
She was one of 10 children, finished her education at Grade 3 and at 13 started work as a domestic hand on a sheep station.
She married Kevin Walker at age 18, started married life in Echuca, but soon moved to a home at Moonahcullah.
They had five boys and five girls. Mrs Walker gave birth to most on the Deniliquin maternity hospital verandah due to a segregation policy.
The family moved to Doveton in 1961, when Moonahcullah closed, seeking greater opportunities for work and education.
Mr Walker soon secured a position with the Gas and Fuel Corporation in Dandenong, but Mrs Walker found the adjustment to urban life difficult.
She recalled that she would sit in her house looking out at the nearby hills and “yearn to be back in a place where I could go for walks and get mushrooms”.
In the early 1970s, in Dandenong the Walkers and other Aboriginal families held meetings in their home, including the Terrick, Harrison, Blow and Charles families.
They were concerned that the growing Koori community needed better support and access to services in their area.
They formed the Dandenong and District Aborigines Association with the Victorian Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs.
In 1975 the organisation was incorporated and became the Dandenong and District Aborigines Co-operative Society Limited (DDACSL).
The group received government funding to help develop programs that would address unemployment and life skills in the Koori community in Dandenong, Doveton, Hallam, Noble Park, a developing Endeavour Hills, and as far afield as Healesville.
Mrs Walker was the first voluntary secretary of the co-operative and regularly hosted committee meetings in her home.
DDACSL formed a close association was with the Gunai Lodge hostel, later renamed the Roy Harrison hostel.
The hostel was established to meet the needs of young Aboriginal men coming to Dandenong from Gippsland for apprenticeships, job training and educational purposes.
From the mid-1970s the Walkers were members of the hostel’s Special Purpose Committee – Mr Walker as president and Mrs Walker as executive secretary.
In the early 1970s, the Victorian Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs employed Mrs Walker as a field officer – the first woman in the state to take on the role.
She dealt with finance and housing and worked alongside Wayne Atkinson and Alick Jackomos in Melbourne’s south-west to improve the lives of Aboriginal families through access to services.
From 1973 until the late 1980s when she retired, Mrs Walker worked for the Doveton Uniting Church as a kindergarten assistant.
She encouraged Aboriginal children in the Doveton area to attend the kindergarten and worked to promote the importance of early childhood education.
Mrs Walker was a mother to 10 children, 35 grandchildren, 69 great-grandchildren, seven great-great-grandchildren (and counting) and was described as a warm and generous person.
She spent her retirement years back near Moonahcullah at Elimdale in New South Wales.
