This card which depicts a figure juggling is familiar to many people around the world. For so many, especially women, life is literally a juggling and balancing act. It is a challenge to balance duties, time constraints and the need to provide basic needs. This card speaks of seemingly mundane aspects of daily life such as raising a family, going to work, cooking, going to school and so the list goes on.
It looked bleak and predictable for little Keelen Mailman. She had an alcoholic mother, and absent father, faced the horrors of regular sexual, physical assault and the casual racism in a small outback town in the sixties.
But somehow, despite the pain and deprivation, the lost education, she managed to absorb her mother’s lessons: her Bidjara language and culture, her obligations to Country, and her loyalty to her family.
So it was no surprise to some that a girl who could hide for a year in her own home to keep her family together, run as fast as Raylene Boyle and catch porcupine and goanna, would one day make history.
At just 30, and a single mother, Keelen became the first Aboriginal woman to run a commercial cattle station when she took over Mt Tabor, two hours from Augathella on the black soil plains of western Queensland. This cattle station is in the heartland of Bidjara country, the place her mother and grandparents and great-grandparents had camped on and cared for, and where their ancestors left their marks on caves and rock walls more than 10,000 years ago.
For 17 years Keelen Mailman lived and worked Mount Tabor, a cattle station subject to Native Title, mending and building fences, putting out salt licks for the cattle, protecting sacred sites, teaching the next generation and caring for family.
She was also instrumental in a 7 year struggle to reclaim Aborigine bones from a museum to return the bones to the land. Keelen is an experienced advocate for her people, both the living and the dead.
Waltzing With Matilda's 