While Don McLeod was responsible for the business side of the operation, Ernie Mitchell oversaw the organisation of the large and widely dispersed community. Observers were impressed with his leadership ability. ‘Very much amongst his people and possessing immense prestige, Ernie looked and was the hub of the wheel’, one observer, Max Brown, remarked (in his 1976 documentary novel The Black Eureka).
Ernie Mitchell Leads Community
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Photograph by John Wilson, 1960.
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Obtaining land had been a primary objective of the strike and this was achieved with the purchase of Yandeyarra station from the profits the group had made from mining. Government approval of the movement provided de facto recognition of the right for Aboriginal people to control their own affairs.
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Columbite Mining Camp at Kulikuli
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