Isabel Flick

Isabel Flick's father was Mick Flick, who was born in the 1890s and grew up in the Aboriginal community in Miambla.

His mother died very young, so he was brought up by his grandmother.

Mick Flick joined the Australian Army in 1914 after running away from his job.

As he was too young to enlist, he lied about his age, and as Aboriginal people did not have birth certificates, he was accepted into the army.

He was sent to the Western Front only six weeks after signing up.

He fought in the Somme Valley but was injured twice and so sent to a hospital in England.

On his return home from the war, he met and married Celia Clevens.

Clevens grew up in the Aboriginal community of Goondiwindi in Queensland.

They moved to Collarenebri, where they lived for a few years.

Mick worked on a farm and Celia lived at home and worked at their families' station.

The police constantly monitored their whereabouts so they needed to move from time to time to avoid being separated from each other.

This was a common strategy amongst Aboriginal communities at the time as the government monitored their activities.

Isabel Flick was born in 1928 in Goondiwindi, Queensland.

She then moved and grew up in an Aboriginal riverbank camp in Collarenebri, on the bank of the Barwon River.

This town was seen as a border between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, as Aboriginal people would experience hostility from the non-Aboriginal population when going into the main street.

The Flick family moved around a lot, just as Mick and Celia Flick had, as a way of "keeping away from the system" imposed by the government in Australia.

Both of Flick's parents feared their children being taken away from them.

Isabel Flick was always known for making trouble as a child, although she was a shy girl.

She was known for being an encouraging and moving person when she spoke.

At the age of 10 she was barred from formal education and even threatened with removal by the Aboriginal Protection Board.

This was done in accordance with the Dog Act.

In 1938, Flick along with her cousins, Florrie and Bob, were moved away from their parents to live with their grandmother at the Toomelah Aboriginal Mission in inland New South Wales.

Tin camps were built for them to live in here.

This was a very controlled time in all of their lives.

Permission was needed for everything, and arrangements were always made, such as attending Sunday school and church services.

If something wasn't up to adequate standards at the house they lived in, or they didn't act in the desired way then the Matron had the right to correct it.

Although this was a very organised and often restricted time in Flick's life, it was where she learnt to read and write, and where she received an education although it was only up to a present-day Year 3's education.

It was here where the government wanted the aboriginal children to assimilate into ‘white society’.

Flick's parents would often come to visit her but this was not done very often, and usually not together.

Her father was only allowed to stay for one hour and she was only allowed one visitor at a time.

Flick began to realise how Aboriginal people had very limited rights and it was here she witnessed her first activist meeting.

She returned home from the Toomelah Mission to Collarenebri to her mother and her father in 1942 wanting to make positive changes to her community.

As a teenager, Flick began to become fed up with the rudeness that always occurred towards Aboriginal people in social situations.

She remembers an instance where people attending a Slim Dusty concert who were not Aboriginal people, held their noses as she and two of her Aboriginal friends walked past.

She was always careful about what she said, as she didn't want to "rock the boat" but she knew that those kinds of things should not occur.

There were many other occurrences such as this where she was discriminated against, and not allowed to be in certain areas or experience the same things the white population could.

In 1949 she gave birth to a boy Ben, with partner Aud.

By 1950, Flick's focus had changed from her teenage years to her role as an adult.

Isabel Ann Flick (1928 – 16 February 2000) was an Australian Aboriginal rights activist, social worker and teacher.

She was recognised as a leader not only of the Aboriginal community of Australia, but as a spokesperson for environmental issues in her hometown of Collarenebri, in northwestern New South Wales.