I was born on Roxby Downs Station in 1952. My father (dec) is a full blood Kokatha man from the Western Desert Region of South Australia, and my mother (dec) is a Antikirinya woman from Ernabella in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, also of South Australia. My father was born on Mt Eba Station which is in Kokatha Country. My father was born from full blood Kokatha descendants, and has lived and travelled in, on and around his country for as long as he can remember. His parents and grandparents on his father's side were all born on Kokatha Country. His mother was borne to a Kokatha woman and an Aranda man. The Aranda people come from the Northern Territory, and so there is a lot of different blood flowing through the veins of my grandmother's side of the family. My father, however, is a pure blood Kokatha man on his father's side, and it shows through the very dark colour of his skin, his features, and his strong love of his country and its sacred sites - it is very easy to tell that he is a true Nguraitja man from his country. He and his family have lived for hundreds and thousands of years on Roxby Downs Station and surrounding Kokatha countries. His oldest sister Cora Dingaman was born there in the year 1919.

My father and his family continued to live, hunt and carry on with their way of life on their lands. They often travelled to Andamooka Opal Fields to mine opal, and often stayed for many months - it was a regular stop. He often told me how he worried about losing his right to live and work on Roxby Downs Station, because of the Wuljballa man (white man). He could see way back then, before I was born, that a dispossession on a large scale was happening: 'it was spreading like the dark shadow that moves over us when the sun goes down', he always said. Aboriginal people were being slowly dispossessed of their country, their enjoyment of it and the freedom to live as they were used to.

By the year 1916 and onwards, there were Americans 'hanging around Woomera' he said. One of his grandfathers went to talk to them to find out what they were doing on their country, and to tell them that this was Kokatha country and it was his, and that they must ask for permission to do anything there. My father said that the old man told them straight out and straight to the point: 'he was a very strong, brave old man', he said. He didn't have an English name, so the Americans gave him a name, 'Old Man Dingaman'.

Morton, Peter Fire across the desert: Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946-1980 Canberra: AGPS Press, 1989

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