ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the complex interactions of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in New South Wales, from those brutal but sometimes ambiguous frontiers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the complex shifts and challenges of the twentieth. Fred Maynard, the Hunter Valley Koori who was a major spokesperson for the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association, demanded the acknowledgement of the achievements of Aboriginal civilisation which had developed the social egalitarianism for which so many trade unionists and other Australians were striving. He called for enough land for self-sufficiency for each New South Wales Aboriginal family and for recognition of cultural difference, with Aborigines allowed free access to public schools but, like Catholic and other religious groups, also able to run their own schools. In the early 1960s, the focus of political organising returned to New South Wales, and the Aboriginal movements campaigned strongly during 1962 for the abolition of the Welfare Board and the dismantling of the Assimilation Policy.
