Aboriginal veteran honoured
More than 75 years after his death, an Aboriginal army veteran who settled in rural Taranaki has been officially recognised by the Australian government for his duty in the Second Boer War.
Private Arthur Wellington, originally Moripin, served in The Fifth Victorian Mounted Rifles, a regiment composed of Australian forces, from 1899 to 1902 in the South African conflict.
He returned home to Victoria injured and was one of the country’s many indigenous soldiers shunned by society and never acknowledged for their service. Until now.
On Wednesday descendants of Wellington gathered at his grave site at Te Henui Cemetery in New Plymouth with a bronze plaque from the Australian Government commemorating his service.
Holding the plaque, to be mounted to Wellington’s headstone in the coming days, grandson Mervyn Whittaker was moved to tears.
‘‘It’s quite an honour... after all of these years he’s finally being honoured,’’ he said.
About four years ago Whittaker received a call from historian Peter Bakker, who has spent years researching and documenting the contribution of indigenous Australians in past conflicts.
Bakker had been working to track the families of eight Aboriginal soldiers in an effort to have them acknowledged, Whittaker said.
‘‘He found seven but he couldn’t find the last one – my grandfather.
‘‘Nobody knew he’d come to New Zealand.’’
Following his discharge from the military, Wellington, like all Aborigines at the time, continued to be treated as a second class citizen.
He relocated across the Tasman to Inglewood, Taranaki, where he picked up work digging the Tarata Tunnel. Wellington, who married and had children, eventually settled in 13
Waitui, east of Inglewood, where he ran a dairy farm.
Grandson Winston Wellington said his grandfather was reported to be one of strongest men of his time in Taranaki.
‘‘In the old days they used to have the wagons in the rivers and they would pick up boulders which were taken to make metal,’’ he said.
‘‘No one could beat him, he would always pick up the heaviest rock.’’
Wellington died of an aneurysm in 1943, aged 66.
Gathered at his grave site 76 years on, about 15 family members reflected on Wellington’s life and the atrocities he, and the Aboriginal community, endured in his motherland.
But despite the grim tales and the unrelenting rain showers, the mood was light as they perused the family’s history detailed in scrapbooks.
Photos documented Wellington’s love for wood carving and showed a collection of animals, including a kangaroo, koala and a platypus, he had sculpted. One of his sculptures, a Kiwi, marks his grave.
‘‘He made one for every member of his family,’’ grandson Ian Whittaker said.
‘‘The story is that he left a note inside every one of the animals. They were messages to his family.’’