The Church Men's Society was a part of the Church of Christ in Peel Street, Ballarat. In 1958 the President was C. Thomas, and S.C. McBride was Secretary. The Aborigines Advancement League (also known as the Aboriginal Advancement League) claims to be the oldest Aboriginal organisation in Australia. It is primarily concerned with Aboriginal welfare issues and the preservation of Aboriginal culture and heritage, and is based in Melbourne. The League was established in 1957 as a response to an enquiry by retired magistrate, Charles McLean, into the circumstances of Aboriginal Victorians. McLean was critical of conditions in the Lake Tyers and Framlingham Aboriginal Reserves. McLean recommended that persons of mixed Aboriginal and European descent be removed from the reserves. The people of Lake Tyers objected to this, and the League was formed out of their campaign. The new League drew from two already existing organisations, the Australian Aborigines League, established 1934 and the Save the Aborigines Committee, which had been established in 1955 as a response to the Warburton Ranges crisis. Founding President of the League was Gordon Bryant, with Doris Blackburn as Deputy President, Stan Davey as Secretary and Douglas Nicholls as Field Officer. Early activities included lobbying for a referendum to change the Australian constitution to allow the Federal government to legislate on Aboriginal affairs, and an establishing a legal defence fund for Albert Namatjira, after he was charged with supplying liquor to an Aboriginal ward.[1] By 1967 it had moved to being fully controlled by Aboriginal people with Bill Onus as the first Aboriginal President.Typed letter on Church Men's Society (C.M.S.) letterhead. The letter concerns a film 'showing the tragic condition of aborigines in Central Western Australia ...' The C.M.S. (Ballarat) planned to hold a public meeting in Ballarat at which Pastor Doug Nicholls, M.B.E. will speak and screen the film. doug nicholls, c. thomas, aborigines, ballarat town hall, stan davey, s.c. mcbride, letterhead

Black and white photo of Pastor Doug Nicholls, MBE, showing boomerangs to a female Japanese tourist at Bill Onus's shop, Aboriginal Enterprises, in Belgrave, 1966. Photo taken by Cliff Bottomley, Australian News and Information Bureau.

Pastor Doug Nicholls, M.B.E., J.P. was field officer for the Aborigines Advancement League (Victoria).Quarto hand written letter on letterhead of the Correspondence from the Aborigines Advancement League (Victoria) to the headmaster of the Ballarat Technical School. The letter relates to a bursary for a student. aborigines, aboriginal, aborigines advancement league (victoria), doug nicholls, cope, muir

Pastor Doug Nicholls meets Watsonia High School students during a visit to the school in November 1966. Glynne Pietzsch and Pastor Nicholls in the newspaper clipping.Part of the Watsonia High collection of Glynne Pietzsch who was a student at Watsonia High in the 1960s.Newspaper clipping, Black and white image, and 3 photographs.watssonia high school, doug nicholls

Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls (1906-1988), footballer, pastor, activist and governor, was born on 9 December 1906 at Cummeragunja Aboriginal mission, New South Wales, fifth child of Herbert Nicholls, seasonal worker, and his wife Florence, née Atkinson. Doug grew up at Cummeragunja, on the Murray River near Barmah, in its golden years of Aboriginal autonomy. Thomas Shadrach James gave him and other Yorta Yorta children a sound primary education, reinforcing the pride and self-assurance gained from their parents. As Doug grew, so too did the powers of the State’s Aboriginal Protection Board. Doug’s elder sister Hilda was removed about 1915. When Doug reached 14, he was moved off under the Aborigines Protection Act (1909) to find work. He took a job with dredging teams constructing levees on the Murray. Like other youths in the region Nicholls played Australian rules football, emulating kinsmen who had won local premierships since the 1890s. Doug and his brother Herbert (‘Dowie’) played with Tongala in the mid-1920s. Melbourne football beckoned, Doug trying out unsuccessfully for Carlton in 1927. He signed with the Northcote Victorian Football Association team, despite his nervousness about his Aboriginality, and was given a job with Northcote City Council. ‘Dowie’ joined him for a season. Doug was short at 5 ft 2 ins (158 cm), but muscular and lightning fast. He competed regularly during a boom in professional running, winning many heat and place prizes. In 1929 he won the Nyah and Warracknabeal gifts, earning a sash and £100 in each, together with a case of cutlery in the latter. Using his speed on the wing for Northcote, he produced great spring and agility from his compact body. The Sporting Globe reported in 1929 that ‘he flashes through packs of big men, whisks around small men . . . and attempts marks at the back of any six-footer’. In front-on clashes he was flattened only to rise again. The sole Aborigine in the VFA, he was known affectionately as the ‘flying Abo’ but called worse by his opponents’ barrackers. He competed for five seasons, being named ‘best and fairest’ twice, appearing in three association grand finals and winning in 1929. Keen to earn more than a seasonal wage, in 1931 Nicholls accepted a three-year contract with Jimmy Sharman’s travelling boxing show. The bouts matched opposites, local against tent boxer, white against black, and sometimes men of different sizes. He faced stiff competition from those who wanted to best the noted Melbourne black footballer, the crowd adding racial abuse. A far better footballer than boxer, he copped some punishment. Fighting in the Melbourne Stadium in December 1931, he was described by Truth as ‘slow and awkward’, but packing a ‘good wallop’. In 1932 Sharman, who treated his boxers fairly, released Nicholls to join the Fitzroy Victorian Football League team, which agreed to employ him as its groundsman. He played fifty-four games for Fitzroy over six seasons until knee trouble forced him out in 1937. Winning cups in 1934 and 1935, he played alongside Haydn Bunton and Wilfred (‘Chicken’) Smallhorn. Grand finals eluded him but he represented Victoria twice. Following his mother’s death, Nicholls revisited the Church of Christ chapel in Northcote, where they had worshipped together. On 17 July 1932 he experienced a conversion. He was soon baptised and witnessed openly, leading his fellow footballers to occasional church parades. Nicholls exhibited leadership qualities. William Cooper, founder of the Australian Aborigines’ League and Nicholls’ Yorta Yorta kinsman and fellow Christian, encouraged the young footballer. In February 1935 Cooper, Nicholls and others lobbied Thomas Paterson, the Commonwealth minister for the interior, over the need for Federal control of Aboriginal affairs. Nicholls attended the Day of Mourning protest for Aborigines held in Sydney on 26 January 1938, declaring: ‘after 150 years our people are still influenced and bossed by white people. I know we can proudly hold our own with others if given the chance’. When Cooper retired in November 1940 Nicholls became secretary of the AAL. On 2 June 1941 Nicholls enlisted in the Citizen Military Forces. He trained at Seymour and Bonegilla before being posted to the 29th Battalion. As Major Frank Corr’s batman, he was popular with other soldiers who tolerated his preaching and Bible reading. His army service was brief, however, and he was discharged in Melbourne on compassionate grounds on 22 January 1942. His biographer claimed that the Fitzroy police requested his return to mediate in the racial tensions developing between servicemen and the mostly respectable Aboriginal families living in crowded and dilapidated Fitzroy housing; Aboriginal people maintain that they requested his release. Nicholls began welfare work and religious services from an Aboriginal home in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. In April 1942, ‘Dowie’ died of road accident trauma, leaving his wife, Gladys, née Bux, and three children. On 26 December 1942 at Moama Methodist Church, New South Wales, Nicholls married her, a caring gesture which developed into a loving partnership. In January 1943 he initiated ‘Aboriginal Sunday’, featuring a gum leaf orchestra and choir. By 1955 this service had moved to July and later evolved into National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week. Ordained a Churches of Christ pastor in 1945, Nicholls conducted a vigorous ministry from a chapel in Gore Street, Fitzroy. His work survived on donations, a small honorarium, and his employment as team coach (1947) and curator at the Northcote Football Ground. In the 1950s Gladys established grocery and opportunity shops to earn income and provide services. Their house soon overflowed with people in need or visitors to Melbourne. Nicholls also hosted inspiring African American visitors such as the pianist Winifred Attwell and the singer Harry Belafonte. His ministry extended to Aboriginal country communities. Gladys taught Sunday school, undertook endless fund-raising and welfare work beside her husband, and became his greatest supporter and financial manager. They formed an Aboriginal Girls’ Hostel in 1956, for which they acted as house parents, and bought holiday units for Aborigines at Queenscliff. Persistently advocating Aboriginal rights, Nicholls protested about the impact of the Woomera rocket range on the people of the Warburton Ranges, co-ordinated the production of a concert, Out of the Dark, scripted by Jean Campbell, to rectify the omission of Aborigines from Victoria’s Commonwealth jubilee celebrations, and criticised the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Board. In 1957 when the board was transformed into the Aborigines’ Welfare Board, he and Harold Blair were appointed as Aboriginal representatives. Maintaining the stance of a political moderate, he did not bear grudges and sought to build bridges between black and white. He co-operated with any group that aided the cause, including the Council of Aboriginal Rights, whose executive were members of the Communist Party of Australia. This association attracted the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, which in 1957 began to keep a file on Nicholls. In May 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 May 1963. The AAL also petitioned the United Nations on land rights in June, perhaps the first indigenous body to do so. He argued for new premises at 58 Cunningham Street, Northcote, opened in 1966 as the ‘Doug Nicholls Centre’. 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 after 1964), which he served as national field officer (1961) and Victorian secretary (1962-63). While an innovator in tactics, he was alarmed by the influence of confrontational ‘black power’ politics in the AAL and resigned as a director amid turmoil on this issue in 1969, claiming the concept was a ‘bitter word’, not needed in Australia. Similar tensions in FCAATSI led him to join with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) in establishing the short-lived National Tribal Council as an alternative forum. As the AAL 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. Many honours were conferred on Nicholls: he was appointed MBE (1957) and OBE (1968) and knighted (1972). In 1962 he was named Victorian ‘Father of the Year’ and the State’s second Aboriginal justice of the peace. Crowned Melbourne’s 1973 King of Moomba, he was declared Bapu Mamus (a Torres Strait term for ‘headman’) by the NTC. On 1 December 1976 Sir Douglas was appointed Governor of South Australia, but his health deteriorated within weeks, making it difficult for him to perform his official duties. In March 1977 he hosted Queen Elizabeth during her royal tour and was appointed KCVO. He relinquished his governorship on 30 April 1977 following a stroke. Ill health continued to dog him during retirement, but he played his Nelson Eddy records, enjoyed his expanding family, and when able, ministered to the Aboriginal Church at the League’s premises. Sir Douglas Nicholls died on 4 June 1988 at Mooroopna, predeceased (1981) by his wife and survived by his five children. He was given a state funeral and buried in tribal ground at Cummeragunja cemetery. Among the many tributes to him are an oval at Northcote, handed to the AAL in 1982, a Canberra suburb gazetted in 1991, and a fellowship for Indigenous leadership established in 2003, all in his name, and a statue of Sir Doug and Lady Nicholls by Louis Laumen, unveiled in 2007 in Parliament Gardens, Melbourne. Sir Douglas Nicholls is shown speaking at a microphone; head and shoulders; dressed in a suit.Pastor Douglas Nicholls

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Former students of Rutherglen Higher Elementary School meet on Rutherglen Show day. This gathering was in the Eastern Palace Chinese restaurant at the Star Hotel on 21st October 2012.Colour photograph of a gathering of former Higher Elementary School students.Written on back of photo: "21st October 2012" Caption on separate piece of paper: "Max Wright, Ian Stones, Max Turner, Bill Morris, Doug Stanton, Gary Grail, Ken Buscall | Bob Martin, Aileen Terrill, Ena (Buscall)___, Andree (Buscall)___, Rod Johnston | Kath Morris, Jean (Buscall) McDonald, Jean Stanton, Leonie (Nicholl) Martin" rutherglen higher elementary school, rutherglen show, eastern palace, star hotel, buscall family, max wright, ian stones, max turner, bill morris, doug stanton, gary grail, ken buscall, bob martin, aileen terrill, ena buscall, andree buscall, rod johnston, kath morris, jean buscall, jean mcdonald, jean stanton, leonie nicholl, leonie martin

The Painters and Dockers union was registered in 1916 and deregistered in 1993. "A very short history of the union" and various persons.Significant to the history of unions and, in particular, the Painters and Dockers Union and some of their past officials.Bookballarat trades and labour council, ballarat trades hall, unions ballarat, unions - painters and dockers, history - trade unions, trade unions, nicholls jack, sproule doug, williamson billo, holman roy (spider), bayliss tommy, brizzie cosmo, nelson alfie (the ferret), o'brien johnny, morris arthur, caines jack