Indigenous Australia

Mickey Free Lawrie

Courtesy Mirning elders

Michael (Mickey) Willis Free Lawrie (1868–1947), whale songman and marban bai (magic-way leader), was born on 5 November 1868 in the Moodyerra sandhills near Eucla at the border of South Australia and Western Australia. He was the son of Irishman Michael (Mickey) Lawrie and his Yerkala (Venus clan) Mirning wife Tabilya/Tjabiltja. Tabilya’s parents and grandparents traced their heritage to the Billiaum, a people whose vast estate included the submerged hunting grounds of Billia Mocalba (the Great Australian Bight), and to Mirning clans whose Country stretched west to Point Malcolm and east to Streaky Bay. At a time when many of the coastal Mirning had been wiped out in waves of genocidal violence perpetrated by European sealers, whalers, prospectors, and inland desert peoples, her bloodline and connection to Country was significant. Mickey inherited the duties and responsibilities of his ancestors from the Dhoogoor (Creation/Dreaming) Jeedara, the great white whale; and Yargaryilya, the seven sisters stars. Jeedara and Yargaryilya created the landforms, the animals, the plants, and their children—the Yerkala Mirning, whom Mickey was trained to lead and protect.

Mickey’s parents had married in a love match recognised in traditional law. Nevertheless, it was his Mirning elders who grew him up at Wookatha (Women’s Whale Dreaming Country), near Yerlada (later Yalata), Fowlers Bay. ‘Mailman Jimmy,’ also known as Koolbari, was his uncle and taught him Mirning-way to listen, learn, understand, and observe and then to receive wisdom and knowledge. A ‘koolbari’ is a keeper of sacred places, such as the caves of the Ngargangurie (Nullarbor) that hold hidden supplies of water. Koolbari held this knowledge and was also a ‘karaji’ or keeper of stories. Both of these titles were passed on to Mickey along with the wisdom and knowledge of his ancestors. Thootha, his tribal name, meant dingo boss or chief.

As a young man Mickey married Sarah Rose Button, known as Rose, and settled in the Country of the Kurndrooba (Greater Stick-Nest Rat clan). From there he watched over the Country of his eastern Mirning clans, which had experienced much bloodshed, taking responsibility for the ngarraroo (orphaned) places of clans that had passed on or broken with their Mirning laws and customs. He worked for European settlers, patrolling the dog fence, cutting wood, clearing scrub, and building fences. In 1896 he leased a block of land in the Hundred of Catt, near Ceduna, South Australia, and bought a buggy. While on his land in 1897 he found two European men, a Lutheran missionary, Pastor Adolf H. Kempe, and a white settler, who had become lost in the bush. They were searching for a suitable place to start a mission and Mickey led them to the Koonibba waterhole. The Lutheran Church, promising a place of salvation and safety for the Mirning and other Aboriginal peoples, acquired the land in 1899 and established Koonibba mission in 1901.

With another Aboriginal man, Thomas Richards, Mickey built the first church at Koonibba in 1903. He brought his wife and children to live at the mission in 1907, and he and Rose were baptised in 1909. In embracing Christianity and becoming a church elder, he did not relinquish his Indigenous leadership: he continued to follow the protocols of welcoming and brokering peace with the displaced peoples who arrived on his Country.

In 1912, as foreman of the scrub cutters at Koonibba mission, Mickey wrote to the chief protector of Aborigines in South Australia asking for a ‘block of land’ to be granted to those who ‘are working for the country and … helping to support the country’ (SRSA GRG52/1/1912/35). He felt that he had a ‘right to ask [government] to give us a start.’ Demonstrating his growing disquiet with the German missionaries at the mission, he also asked for an ‘english school for our children’: ‘I don’t wish my country people to [send] their children to [a] german mission school’ (SRSA GRG52/1/1912/35), he explained. His letter received no reply, but he decided to move his family away from the mission anyway. He would move on and off the mission for the rest of his days.

Rose died in 1919 and in 1923 Mickey married Florence Richards. Sixteen children were added to his family. He built a house at White Well, near Bilianabbie, one of his traditional winter camps. From there he oversaw his duties and responsibilities for Country near the ancient centre of Yergamban/Ilgamba/Yilgamba, a place of gathering for ceremonies. His daughter Hazel Coaby (b. 1927) recalled him singing and dancing his many totems in corroborees attended by leaders from other areas. Everyone recognised him as the ‘big boss of the Yulbari tribe clan which is Mirning’:

Mickey Free was Chief and Protector and [Guardian] and Custodian over the whole Mirning territory including water holes rock holes caves and all of the Mirning clans from Fowlers to Head of Bight to Merdeyra Eucla Point [Culver]. (Coaby [1987])

In 1924 Mickey took his thirteen-year-old son Albert James ‘Bulla’ Lawrie to Yergamban in preparation for him to become marban bai as an adult. Later, he taught Bulla’s daughter, his granddaughter Yagalu Dorcas Miller, born in 1938 at White Well, the Mirning clan boundaries and the ritual of Miranangu (Head of the Bight as the Gateway to the Galaxy), a sacred whale calling place and ceremony ground for whale dance and song. She watched as he sang and called the whales, who danced for him.

Mickey passed away at Koonibba on 29 March 1947. Bulla continued the Gateway to the Galaxy ritual after his father’s death, and Dorcas passed it down to her ‘kids and all their children, so they will continue’ the ritual. Bulla’s nephew, Bunna Lawrie (b. 1950), continues to call the whales. After being hunted close to extinction during the nineteenth century, southern right whale numbers began to recover and then grow during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in line with the increase in Lawrie descendants continuing Mirning-way. In 1985 Mickey’s grandsons Bunna Lawrie, Neil Coaby, Mackie Coaby, and their nephew Bruce Mundy, all members of the band Coloured Stone, named a track on their first album, Koonibba Rock, after him. The road to Koonibba is named Micky Free Lawrie Drive to honour him.

Marbanu Bunna Lawrie and Yagalu Dorcas Miller are the two most senior custodian elders of Mirning Country and are the grandson and granddaughter of Mickey Free Lawrie. They hold the men’s and women’s Jeedara Dhoogoor (Whale Dreaming), continuing the legacy of the ancestors.