Doug Nicholls the first Aboriginal governor of Australian state; South Australian premier Don Dunstan's choice in 1976
South Australian governor Douglas Nicholls in 1976 came from a background of pastor, activist and player with Fitzroy club in the Victorian Football League.
Image courtesy National Archives of Australia
South Australian premier Don Dunstan appointed Australia's first Aboriginal state governor, Pastor Doug Nicholls, in 1976. (Nicholls resigned in the next year due to a stroke.)
Nicholls had been a pioneering Victorian Football League player with Fitzroy, a pastor and an activist.
Among the many Aboriginal causes that Nicholls had taken up was his protest about the impact in the 1950s of the Woomera rocket range on the people of the Warburton Ranges.
Born in 1906 at Cummeragunja Aboriginal mission, New South Wales, Nicholls and other Yorta Yorta children received a sound primary education from Thomas Shadrach James. But he was moved off this mission at 14 under the Aborigines Protection Act (1909) to find work. He took a job with dredging teams constructing levees on the Murray.
After playing football with Tongala in the mid 1920s, Nicholls signed with Northcote in the Victorian Football Association and later played 54 games for Fitzroy and represented Victoria twice until knee trouble forced him out in 1937. (In 2016, the Australian Football League named its annual round celebrating Aboriginal players and culture after him.)
After his mother’s death, Nicholls revisited the Church of Christ chapel in Northcote, Victoria, and was soon baptised, leading his fellow footballers to occasional church parades.
Nicholls succeeded friend William Cooper as secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League and was ordained a Churches of Christ pastor in 1945, conducted a vigorous ministry from a chapel in Gore Street, Fitzroy. His ministry extended to Aboriginal country communities.
In 1957, Nicholls formed the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League with Doris Blackburn and Gordon Bryant, a Federal parliamentarian. As its paid field officer and spokesman, Nicholls contested assimilation policies and used film to raise awareness of issues. When the welfare board attempted to close Lake Tyers reserve, Gippsland, he resigned in disgust and led a protest march on parliament in 1963. The Australian Aborigines’ League (AAL) also petitioned the United Nations on land rights in that year.
In 1958, Nicholls was a foundation member of the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders after1964).
While an innovator in tactics, Nicholls was alarmed by the influence of confrontational “black power” politics in the Australian Aborigines’ League and resigned as a director amid turmoil on this issue in 1969, claiming “black power” was a "bitter word", not needed in Australia. He joined with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) in establishing the short-lived National Tribal Council as an alternative forum.
As the Australian Aborigines’ League leadership moderated their stance, he returned as president (1969-74) of the new all-Aboriginal organisation. He was also a keen patron of the National Aboriginal Sports Foundation, founded in 1969.