The Northcote Koori Mural is located in St Georges Road Thornbury, Victoria in the City of Darebin. It was designed by former Northcote High School art teacher Megan Evans [1] in collaboration with members of the Thornbury-based Aborigines Advancement League, which owns the mural.
Evans worked with Aboriginal artist and elder Lin Onus researching and designing the mural in collaboration with members of the Victorian Aboriginal Community, and it was painted in between 1983 and 1985, by trainee artists including Les Griggs, a Gunditjmara man (1962–93), Ray Thomas, Millie Yarran, Ian Johnson and Elaine Trott and many other volunteers.
The Northcote Koori Mural was originally located opposite the Northcote Town Hall on Council land in High Street. this site was later sold and the mural was moved to the Aboriginal Advancement League in St. Georges Road, Thornbury where a large, free-standing wall was erected specifically to accommodate the mural on the edge of the Sir Douglas Nicholls Sporting Complex. Megan Evans considered the artwork significant because “…it was a landmark for the Aboriginal community at that time and because Northcote Council was prepared to support a project which was politically ahead of its time". [2]
In the late 1990s, the local council sold the land where the mural was situated and it was relocated to nearby St George's Road, Thornbury, close to the AAL's current location. [3]
The mural was proposed for inclusion on the Darebin Heritage Overlay in 2011. [4] The Mural represents Victoria's Aboriginal culture and history and contains strong political statements about the incarceration of Aboriginal people [5] Among other elements, it depicts large-scale renderings of historical artworks by Tommy McRae and William Barak, a representation of Aboriginal men manacled in neck chains taken from a well known photograph, and the Lake Tyers land rights campaign of the 1970s. [6]
Darebin Council allocated $10,000 in its 2011-12 budget for a report on how to restore the artwork and then a further $80,000 in the 2012-13 budget for the mural's conservation and restoration, after it had become dilapidated from weather and an occasional target of graffiti vandals. [7]
The original painted panels were removed, and a restored digital print copy was installed in December 2013. [8]
The City of Whittlesea is a local government area located in the outer northern suburbs of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia. The city covers an area of 490 square kilometres (189.2 sq mi), and in June 2018, it had a population of 223,322.
The City of Darebin is a local government area in Victoria, Australia, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. It has an area of 54 square kilometres (20.8 sq mi) and in June 2018 Darebin had a population of 161,609. Municipal offices are located at 350 High Street, Preston.
Koori is a demonym for Aboriginal Australians from a region that approximately corresponds to southern New South Wales and Victoria. The word derives from the Indigenous language Awabakal. For some people and groups, it has been described as a reclaiming of Indigenous language and culture, as opposed to relying on European titles such as "Aboriginal". The term is also used with reference to institutions involving Koori communities and individuals, such as the Koori Court, Koori Radio and Koori Knockout.
Fairfield is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km (3.7 mi) north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Darebin and Yarra local government areas. Fairfield recorded a population of 6,535 at the 2021 census.
Northcote is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km (4.3 mi) north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Darebin local government area. Northcote recorded a population of 25,276 at the 2021 census.
Preston is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 km (5.6 mi) north-east of Melbourne's central business district, located within the City of Darebin local government area. Preston recorded a population of 33,790 at the 2021 census.
The Merri Creek is a waterway in southern parts of Victoria, Australia which flows through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. It begins near Wallan and flows south for 70 km until joining the Yarra River at Dights Falls. The area where the creek meets the river was traditionally the location for large gatherings of the Wurundjeri people and is suspected to have been the location for one of the earliest land treaties in Australia between Indigenous Australians and European settlers.
Westgarth is a neighbourhood within the suburb of Northcote, about 4 or 5 km north-east of Melbourne's central business district in Victoria, Australia. It is in the local government area of the City of Darebin. The neighbourhood has a commercial centre, distinct from the main commercial centre of Northcote, located near Westgarth railway station, just north of Clifton Hill. While Westgarth does not have any official borders, it is generally considered to extend from Merri Creek in the west to the boundary of Fairfield in the east.
The Merri Creek Trail is a shared use path for cyclists and pedestrians that follows the Merri Creek through the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation.
Batman's Treaty was an agreement between John Batman, an Australian grazier, businessman and coloniser, and a group of Wurundjeri elders, for the purchase of land around Port Phillip, near the present site of Melbourne. The document came to be known as Batman's Treaty and is considered significant as it was the first and only documented time when Europeans negotiated their presence and occupation of Aboriginal lands directly with the traditional owners. The treaty was implicitly declared void on 26 August 1835 by the Governor of New South Wales, Richard Bourke.
Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre is an arts and community centre located in High Street in Northcote, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
Platform Youth Theatre was a theatre company for 16- to 26-year-olds based in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. that was operational for eighteen years from 1998-2016. The Company was reflective of the cultural melting pot of the Darebin area, and was originally a program within the Darebin Council. It had a diversity of participants in its programs and a commitment to including marginalised young people and a youth governance model.
The Fairfield Industrial Dog Object (FIDO) is a huge sculpture in hardwood of a canine in the inner northern Melbourne suburb of Fairfield, Victoria, Australia. It was part of the Darebin City Council's Public Art Program, and is located beside the Fairfield railway station.
Bronwyn Bancroft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, administrator, book illustrator, and among the first three Australian fashion designers to show their work in Paris. She was born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, and trained in Canberra and Sydney.
The Fitzroy Stars Football Club is an Australian rules football club located 7 km north east of central Melbourne in the suburb of Thornbury. The club is based in the Aboriginal community of Melbourne's inner northern suburbs. They usually play their home games at Victoria Park in Abbotsford, the former home ground of the Collingwood Football Club, but have also played at other venues including the Bill Lawry Oval in 2012.
Johnson Park is a small municipal park of almost 2 hectares in area in the suburb of Northcote in the State of Victoria, Australia. The Park is situated approximately 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from the central business district of Melbourne and is a significant public recreational space for local Northcote residents and the surrounding community.
Maree Clarke is an Australian multidisciplinary artist and curator from Victoria, renowned for her work in reviving south-eastern Aboriginal Australian art practices.
Megan Evans is a Melbourne based visual artist known for her works about Australian colonisation. She graduated from Victoria University of Technology with a PhD in 2003. Evans describes herself as an interdisciplinary artist. Her work is held in a number of collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of Ballarat. She won the Footscray Art Prize in 2019 for her work, PARLOUR.
Elizabeth Maud Hoffman, née Morgan, also known as Aunty Liz or Yarmauk, was an Australian Indigenous rights activist and public servant. She co-founded the first Indigenous Woman's Refuge in Australia, named "The Elizabeth Hoffman House" in her honour. She was one of 250 women included in the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001 and received the inaugural NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.