Neville Bonner by Angela Burger

Neville Bonner

A Biography

by Angela Burger

Macmillan, 1979, [First Edition], ISBN 0333252365, black and white photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, small tear at bottom front, sunned spine (see photographs)

“When Neville Bonner was sworn in as a senator on 17 August 1971, he became the first Aborigine in the Australian Federal Parliament. ‘I have been a politician from the age of four.  I had to be to survive.’
Survival was not easy for Bonner, who was born on Ukerebagh Island in 1922.  He spent his early years in a succession of ‘‘blacks’ camps’ in northern NSW where home was anything from a blanket under lantana bushes to a tin shanty.  From his mid-teens to his early twenties Bonner carried a swag, trying his hand as a rough rider, dairy hand, stockman and cattle drover.
In 1945 Bonner and his first wife moved to Palm Island, a Queensland government aboriginal settlement.  Here for the next fifteen years he became involved in aboriginal issues and gained an insight into welfare matters which was to prove invaluable in later years when he became involved in, and eventually president of, OPAL.
It was through the encouragement of his second wife’s daughter that Bonner became seriously interested in politics.  He joined the Liberal Party in 1967 and in 1971 was nominated to fill the Senate vacancy created by Dame Annabelle Rankin’s resignation.  Bonner’s outspokenness on aboriginal issues has both won and lost him many supporters, on occasion even jeopardizing his position within the Liberal Party.
Neville Bonner’s story is not only that of one man’s struggle against the odds, it is a unique view of an Aborigine imposing his values on the cut-throat world of Federal politics.”