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NAIDOC Week: Tribute to Indigenous Service

By Amber McKinnon

August 2001 - In recognition of the important contribution Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made to the Australian Defence Force (ADF), a number of high-ranking Defence personnel attended a special memorial service at the Australian War Memorial during NationalAboriginal and Islander Day of Commemoration (NAIDOC) week.

The memorial service, which was conducted by Air Commodore Royce Thompson, was held at the Indigenous Memorial site situated in bushland behind the War Memorial on Tuesday, 10 July.

Key guests included the Secretary of Defence, Dr Allan Hawke, and Major General Simon Willis representing the Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie. Deputy Chief of Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Chris Spence, and the National Secretary of the RSL, Mr Derek Robson also attended.

Guest speaker at the ceremony was Dr Margot Weir, Consultant, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Veterans and Services Association (ATSIVA). The role of ATSIVA is to advise on welfare and pension services to Indigenous veterans, Service personnel, widows, widowers and their dependants.

Dr Weir, herself an ex-Naval officer, spoke of the long and proud Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contribution to Australia's freedom. ' The Australian Defence Force has provided for many Indigenous people, a sense of place and belonging with discipline and equity,' she said.

Dr Weir, also referred to the Forces as a leader in the process of reconciliation and spoke of its [ADF] group spirit and its ability to foster community and sense of purpose. 'It lives on in Aboriginal veterans, as it does in all affiliated associations and individuals,' she said, adding: 'May these values flow out into society and evermore grow'.

Later, AVM Spence commented that Dr Weir's words had struck a cord with him. He described his own contact with a special and important part of Australia, when he flew Caribous in NT and went on to express his personal belief that the ADF led the community in recognition of Native Title.

NAIDOC Week gives the Defence Force an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the significant contribution Indigenous people have made to the ADF and defence of Australia. Indigenous military personnel have long been a part of Australia's proud military tradition and have been serving and protecting the country since World War I.

More than 4000 Indigenous Australians were involved in World Wars I and II. Today, Indigenous personnel are serving on Peacekeeping Operations and in many employment areas in the three Services.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Memorial was built following a resolution by the United Nations in 1994 that defined the goal for the decade as one of strengthening international cooperation for the solution of problems faced by Indigenous peoples. (1994 was the International Year of the World's Indigenous People.)

Source: Air Force News

Australia's only World War Two Aboriginal fighter pilot

Leonard Victor Waters was born on the 20th June 1924 at Boomi, NSW. He was educated to the 7th grade at the Nindigully State School in Queensland and worked as a Shearer with a contractor in the Goondiwindi district. However, growing up in the era of Kingsford Smith, Hinkler and Lindbergh, Waters from the start, in his own words, had his 'head in the clouds'.

Len Waters enlisted in the RAAF on the 24th August 1942 as a trainee flight mechanic. Within a year he was applying for a transfer to aircrew. His interviewing officer described his appearance and manners as 'a bit rough' but concluded favorably that Waters 'should make a fighter'.

Although exceptionally adept at Morse Code- a skill which he feared might see him allocated to wireless operator's duties-Waters wanted only to be a fighter pilot. He succeeded in his ambition and, after training on Tiger Moths and Wirraways, completed an operational conversion onto the P-40 Kittyhawk, one of the war's outstanding fighter-ground attack aircraft.

Described as a'gaunt, genial figure, humble despite his daring feats', Len Waters saw action with No78 Squadron. He flew ninety-five operational sorties from Noemfoor, Morotai and Tarakan, bombing and strafing Japanese ground positions.

Waters's most frightening, moment came when a bomb dropped by another aircraft hit his plane and, unexploded, lodged behind him. Comparing the experience to having a loaded gun held to his head, Waters had to fly some three hours back to base with the bomb likely to detonate at any moment. 'I'll tell you what', he said afterwards, 'that was on of the best landings I ever made'.

In addition to his courage in air fighting, Waters won RAAF's middle-weight boxing title in the Islands.

Demobilised after the war, Len Waters spent thirty-five years in the most Australian of occupations, shearing, and estimated that he must have sheared a million sheep.

He died on the 24th August 1993 aged 69 in Cunnamulla and is buried at St. George Cemetery.

Source: RAAFA

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