Meeting Nanny Nellie

Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be advised there are images depicting a person who is deceased. Readers are warned there may be words and descriptions in this article that may be culturally sensitive and not used nowadays in contemporary public or community contexts. Terms and annotations that reflect the attitude of the original author or the period in which the item was written may be considered inappropriate today. Such terms do not reflect the current opinions of the AM or its staff.

Dr Mariko Smith, Manager, First Nations Collections & Engagement

In 1925, the Australian Museum unveiled sculptures depicting Aboriginal people in its Ethnology Gallery. One of them was of an Aboriginal woman, who for many years was held in the public gaze, stripped of her identity and objectified. Learn how her living descendants worked with the Museum to reclaim her story through truth-telling and reconciliation in action.

Note: This is an imagined narrative based on writing provided to the Australian Museum by the family of Nellie Bungil Walker — known fondly by the family as Nanny Nellie — as inspired by her memory.

“I was born Nellie Bungil in 1867 at Bombala in New South Wales, which refers to the place where the waters meet, in the language of the Ngarigo people. I am the daughter of Jerry Bungil and Betsy Bungil (née York).

I travelled a long way during my life and lived in many places. I walked to Warangesda Mission, which is more than 500 kilometres from my home, where I married Albert Kennedy in 1884, and had my first child, who sadly never survived. I later walked back to my Country, where I met and married Robert Soloman in 1889. We had a daughter together in Kyogle, also named Nellie.

In 1901, at the turn of the century, I was back in Moruya. I had a daughter, named Margaret Bungil, who only lived a few months. By 1902, in Wallaga Lake, I was with a son named Rawson Walker, and in 1911, I married his father, James Walker. I had my last child, Victoria May Walker, in Batemans Bay.*

During 1924 and 1925, I was taken to Sydney to model for a sculpture by Rayner Hoff, which was put on exhibition in the Australian Museum on College Street, along with a sculpture made of Jimmy Clements and a young boy called Harold Marsh.

I have travelled a full journey and have struggled and overcome adversity to hold my family together. I come from a long line of strong women and men in my family.

Here is my story, here is my life. I stand before you now so you can see and learn how it was in my life and my times and come to appreciate the life and times of my people.”

*Victoria would in time become Victoria Archibald, the grandmother of Aunty Irene Ridgeway and great-grandmother of Daniel King, who were both involved in creating the NITV documentary film Her Name is Nanny Nellie.

In the Australian Museum’s Bayala Nura exhibition (closed from mid-August 2023)¹ of the First Nations Gallery, a temporary display was installed featuring one life-size sculpture from the Australian Museum’s collection. Created in 1925 by George Rayner Hoff, and hand-coloured by Miss E. A. King, the sculpture of the supposedly nameless Aboriginal woman was based on the appearance of Nellie Bungil Walker. The display was suitably titled, Her Name is Nanny Nellie.

This sculpture was originally part of a trio to showcase an example of an Aboriginal family group. Nanny Nellie was also accompanied by sculptures based on the appearances of a Wiradjuri man named Uncle Jimmy Clements and a Yaegl boy named Harold Marsh. Due to ongoing conversations with their family members and the fragility of the sculptures, those were not featured in the display.

Ernest Wunderlich, who was a Museum Trustee and later President of the Board of Trustees, commissioned the three sculptures as a gift to the AM, and they were given the name The Wunderlich Aboriginal Group² in dedication. They were originally displayed in the Australian Ethnology Gallery of the south Vernon Wing.

The Australian Museum, like many other collecting institutions of the time, had represented Aboriginal peoples in ways now recognised as racist. The sculptures were originally exhibited in a way that is recognised now as a stereotypical interpretation, particularly through the focus on displaying only “full-blooded” and dark-skinned Aboriginal people. They were seen as scientific case studies rather than humans who are part of a dynamic, continuing culture.

The Museum’s First Nations team, in consultation with Nanny Nellie’s great-granddaughter Aunty Irene Ridgeway and her family, developed the Her Name is Nanny Nellie display in connection with an exciting forthcoming documentary directed by Aunty Irene’s son Daniel King. It focuses on his mother’s journey to reclaim Nanny Nellie’s identity and story. This display was in place from mid-July to mid-August 2023.

The family, together with the AM, now ensure that Nanny Nellie’s likeness is no longer a passive, nameless object. Instead, she stands for recognition of First Nations’ rights to tell their own histories and for family reconnection.

On 19 July 2023, the Australian Museum hosted a special Nights at the Museum event so members of Nanny Nellie’s family would be present to officially open the Her Name is Nanny Nellie display, and for Aunty Irene to participate in presentations to attendees about the family’s collaboration with the Australian Museum’s First Nations, Collections Care & Conservation, Archives & Library, and Exhibitions teams on the sculptures’ conservation and documentary projects.

Nanny Nellie’s family wanted to re-introduce her to the Australian public as the incredible woman she really was, rather than as an anonymous museum sculpture. It was about reclaiming her narrative and identity at the Australian Museum.

The event was truly a celebration of First Nations self-determination. The multi-talented Elaine Crombie hosted the event, which included an incredible line-up of First Nations musicians and live music, cultural adornment-making workshops and spear-making demonstrations conducted by Aboriginal knowledge-holders, as well as the unveiling of this important truth-telling display as led by Nanny Nellie’s family. More than 600 people attended and enjoyed the evening honouring our Elders and Black excellence, with this year’s NAIDOC Week theme being For Our Elders.

Her Name is Nanny Nellie display at the Australian Museum — almost 100 years since the trio of sculptures were first put on display at the Museum — marks a vital step in addressing how Aboriginal peoples have been represented in Australia’s public history, particularly in trusted and authoritative public institutions such as museums, as well as presenting more opportunities for First Nations-led stories to take centre stage.

The Her Name is Nanny Nellie documentary premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2023 and will air on SBS NITV in 2024.

1. ^{The Bayala Nura exhibition and section of the First Nations Gallery closed for redevelopment in August 2023 as part of the Australian Museum’s permanent First Nations Gallery which will reopen in 2025/2026, following extensive Indigenous community consultation and new exhibition development across the spaces.}
2. ^{See pages 377-378 of The Australian Museum Magazine (1926), July-September issue, Volume II, No. 11.}