The official unveiling of a very special new exhibit took place at Wingham Museum on Tuesday, October 29.
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Special guests included a representative of the Wingham RSL Sub-branch, and Aunty Barbara Clarke OAM who performed Welcome to Country.
The volunteers at the Museum have just complerted months of planning and research resulting in the relocation and refurbishment of the Indigenous Artefacts exhibit, with the addition of a new photographic display paying tribute to local Aboriginal people who served in armed forces.
Museum curator, Terry Tournoff said he thinks the display tribute to Aboriginal people who served in armed forces might be the only one of its kind in NSW.
"We've done some research and we found an actual tribute to Aboriginal servicemen in a museum in Albany, WA. We haven't found a specific tribute directly focused on Aboriginal servicemen anywhere else in this State," Terry said.
Terry and his team took care to research as much as they could about displaying the material.
"The Museum is committed to treating all Aboriginal artefacts and material with the greatest respect whilst taking into account cultural sensitivities," Terry said.
"Our own Indigenous people use oral and pictorial means to pass on the rich knowledge of their history, culture and understanding of country.
"As a Museum we aspire to carry on that tradition of storytelling and hence when we decided to refurbish this particular display we wanted to tell a story that, I'm sorry to say, to some extent has been overlooked for far too long.
"We are hopeful that the contribution our Indigenous people made in times of conflict has now been recognised in a respectful way by this tribute to Aboriginal servicemen," Terry said.
The tribute portion of the display includes poppys in the colours of the Aboriginal flag that were created and donated by the ladies from the Tuesday Craft Group.
Another new addition to the display being developed is a language wheel aimed at children, where when the wheel is turned to a particular image, for instance a koala, a window displays the English word for the image, plus the Gathang (Biripi language) equivalent.
