·      Aboriginals had been arguing for their rights for years and for January 26^th to become Mourning day.

·      Aboriginals tried to organize ‘Day of Mourning’ with low luck and they were led by Jack Patten, William Ferguson and William Cooper.

·      Following the protest, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons met with organizers but nothing came of it.

·      The Sunday before Australia Day was set aside, but over time, this was shifted to July and eventually evolved into NAIDOC week.

 

But the organisers saw Aborigines as essential to the day's proceedings. They brought twenty-six of them from Menindee, a settlement of Wiradjuri and Barkendjii people on the River Darling, and from Brewarrina east of Bourke (the Murawari people) to act out Aboriginal resistance to the British landing, and to pose on the first float in the pageant. 

 

The meeting of Aborigines at the Australian Hall on 'the 150th Anniversary of the Whitemen's seizure of our country' passed unanimously a resolution  protesting at the whitemen's mistreatment of Aborigines since 1788 and appealing for new laws ensuring equality for Aborigines within the Australian community (figure 17).

 

Living conditions for Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia had worsened as the economy deteriorated from the 1920s

 

They were out of sight of most Australians, who, living in the capital cities, knew or understood little of their plight.

 

By 1938 Australians, still 98 per cent British in background, had, after almost one hundred years, found agreement on the name, timing and nature of the day's celebration they had come to share

 

The heading for the editorial was 'A dream that came true'.24  That nation now had its own capital, Canberra (in the Australian Capital Territory, cut out of New South Wales in 1908) and a provisional Parliament House.