Yass District Historical Society’s NAIDOC Week Reflection

The Yass District Historical Society is an important cultural organisation in the Yass Valley. The Society curates our history and honours those that have contributed to our communities.

As you may be aware, the theme for NAIDOC week 2022 is Get Up, Stand Up, Show Up. Two Yass Valley people who epitomise this theme are featured in the Yass and District Museum’s Movers and Shakers exhibition which will reopen in October.

The first of these people is Ngunnawal elder Eric Bernard Bell OAM, who was recognised in the Yass and wider community as a man of “unwavering dedication to providing greater understanding of the issues and inequalities surrounding Aboriginal health, and meaningful employment opportunities”. His Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) citation reads “for services to the Indigenous Community through aged care, employment and environment organisations.”

As Mayor Nic Carmody in 2011 put it when announcing Eric as citizen of the year, “Eric stands for everything that is good in this town.”

Eric was born in 1940 to a very different world from Lucy Carroll born in 1828.

Known as Queen Lucy, she was regarded as the leading elder of the Ngunnawal people of the Yass district. Early documents refer to her as Lucy Hamilton and Lucy Hume. At the time of her birth Hamilton Hume, his two brothers and his father Andrew lived in the district. Lucy, however, was married to Andy Lane and later after his death to Ned Carroll, stood proudly on her own merits.

Lucy fought for the right to determine her own life and for her people. Many incidents reflect her determination to Get Up, Stand Up and Show Up. It was Lucy who stood up to welcome the Sisters of Mercy to Yass in 1875. It was Lucy who insisted on and got decent flour, collected money to pay the fines of relatives who fell foul of the law, who stood up to a particularly offensive reporter for the Daily Telegraph in 1910.

Her most poignant fight was to keep her home and her family at Oak Hill when authorities forcibly removed them to the new Edgerton Reserve twelve miles out of town. Faced with eviction, she sought legal advice to confirm the twenty-three-acre land grant from Lord Carrington only to be told the grant had been revoked earlier that year. Lucy lived through the displacement and disintegration of her people’s way of life and means of survival.

Eric also knew the traumas of forced relocation, unreasonable conditions on reserves such as Hollywood, the removal of his two sisters, and the struggle to find meaningful employment and dignity in a racist society.

The stature of the man is reflected in his own words as recorded in his biography, Looking Back: My Story, “Dwelling on the myriad of hurts from the past can be toxic to anyone’s wellbeing (but) I am realistic about the enduring trauma for people who have been deeply damaged through no fault of their own by ill-conceived social engineering.”

These two notable citizens of Yass, Queen Lucy Carroll and Eric Bernard Bell OAM both attest to the importance of getting up, showing up and standing tall.

This article was written with thanks to Ken Bell for his permission to refer to people who have passed on and to Looking Back: My Story by Eric Bell OAM.

A free digital version of Eric’s story can be downloaded from the Society’s website: https://yasshistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Eric-Bell-book-April-2011.pdf

Written by
Judith Davidson
Publicity Officer, Yass District Historical Society

• Topics:

• History
• First Nations Peoples
• NAIDOC