James Bugg: Overseer of Shepherds AACo
English born James Bugg arrived in Australia as a convict in 1826 and a year later was in the employ of the AACo…
Purfleet Gum Leaf Band
Gum leaf playing is deeply linked with the culture of First Australians who have always played this unique instrument. It is believed gum leaves were used in hunting, signalling, rituals, as spiritual instruments and even toys…
Girambit
Girambit ‘Saltwater’ with its natural beauty and waterways has always been a sacred and spiritual place. It is the home of the Birrbay ‘Biripi’ people and it is a place of healing…
Rex Morris
Rex Morris was born at Purfleet in 1953 to Shirley and Rex. He was just four years old when welfare authorities came to Taree with the intention of forcibly removing children…
Shirley Morris – Biripi Activist
Biripi woman Shirley Mitchell was born in 1933 and grew up on Purfleet Aboriginal Reserve. When welfare authorities came to Purfleet to take Aboriginal children with fairer skin…
Gunner Forwood on HMS Endeavour
Stephen Forwood, born abt 1737, was the Gunner on Captain James Cook’s HMS Endeavour during its epic journey of discovery…
The establishment of Purfleet Mission
By 1900 the NSW Aborigines Protection Board had decided that it was better for Aboriginal people to live separately from Europeans. It was to ‘protect them from the worst excesses and corrupting influences of European society’…
The Browns and The Big Hairs
Each year on the third weekend in August in Montana USA, the Crow Fair begins. In 1992 during the Crow Fair, the Brown family from Taree were adopted into the Al and Ruby Big Hair family…
Toki Simon: The smiling assassin
Toki William Simon was a Biripi man born in Forster, NSW in 1915. When he was young, Toki worked with his family to craft cabbage tree furniture at Forster. He also played rugby league for Cape Hawke being regularly identified as one of the team’s best players. In 1939 Toki married Joyce Dungay from Taree. World…