Albany 2026, Menang people & Mokare

Menang leader Mokare was a diplomat and negotiator who shared his cultural knowledge with settlers who came to Albany.

He was a very influential figure in the early days of Albany (Kinjarling) and such a close friend of the first Government Resident that they were buried together.

But, even the British arrived in 1826, it is possible that Mokare had already interacted with the French who previously visited King George Sound. It seems likely he was the “helpful young man” described in French expedition documents.

Mokare showed optimism and amiability towards the settlers. I’ve even seen this referred to as “the friendly frontier”, despite previous mistreatment by whalers and sealers who came and went.

After the arrival of the Amity, Mokare soothed relationships between the newcomers and his family and friends of the Noongar Menang people, whose traditional land this is.

Mokare developed a real friendship with the first Government Resident, Dr Alexander Collie, who was a medical doctor, surgeon and good amateur botanist.

In Dr Collie’s early letters, he writes about Mokare and his brother Nakina as his “house guests”, and Mokare was the guide and interpreter on an expedition to the Porongorups in April 1831. A memorial on Mount Barker commemorates the expedition and Mokare’s role in it.

Information and insights from Mokare and Nakina gave Dr Collie the basis for his essay The Aborigines Of King George Sound, which was published in instalments in the Perth Gazette in 1834.

“We certainly had come into their country and set ourselves down,” he wrote.

He also describes the illness of Mokare and his death, possibly from influenza, as introduced diseases impacted the Indigenous population.

When Mokare was dying, Dr Collie nursed him in his home and, when he passed, Dr Collie helped bury him according to Aboriginal custom. Aboriginals and Europeans assembled at Dr Collie’s house and walked together to a site chosen by Nakina (also a tactful, diplomatic and influential leader). Europeans dug a grave under Nakina’s instruction and Mokare was laid in it, with his cloak and some possessions.

When Dr Alexander Collie was dying in 1835, he asked to be buried alongside Mokare, who had died in 1831.

The Town Hall was built on the burial site between 1886 and 1888, and Dr Collie’s remains were moved to the Memorial Park Cemetery.

We don’t know what happened to Mokare’s, but just slightly further up York Street from this spot, there is a statue of him in Alison Hartman Gardens.

While Mokare stands out as a great leader of the Menang people, others should be mentioned, particularly Wandinyil, or King Tommy as he was later known.

In the early settlement days, he watched the relationship form between traditional owners and newcomers. Documents show he helped plant a Norfolk Island pine tree that still stands in the gardens of Strawberry Hill (Barmup).

Wandinyil valued the culture taught to him by elders and had a camp above Serpentine Road on Mt Melville. He believed that all should be treated equally, and began to question the actions of the newcomers. He was imprisoned for a time on Rottnest Island.

He become a whaler on the whaling boats, but came to oppose this. It is reported that, in 1843, he protested against the killing of whales, was arrested and again sent to Rottnest Island.

But while Wandinyil wished for land for his tribe to live on, it seems he did not want segregation for his people. He too recognised that integration of Menang and settlers, the coming together of two differing cultures, could forge a future.

He dropped the name Wandinyil in favour of “King Tommy of Albany” (Kinjarling).

When, in October 1890, the Governor of Western Australia, Sir William Robinson, arrived in Albany to lead celebrations for the granting of self-government of the colony, Tommy King (“the boss Aboriginal” and an elder), along with others in war paint, presented him with a petition that claimed Albany belonged to his “tribe” and had been taken by agents of the British Crown. More than 100 years before Mabo land rights.

I’ve spent weeks researching, reading and thinking about the stoic, resilient and realistic Menang people, with their connection to land and many fine leaders.

And a seemingly strange word hovers over all this thought — that the Menang people were worldly. They had seen people come and go before, and lived with these people who stayed.

For 200 years, the community of Albany has lived with diversity.

It takes me back to Mokare, sharing his cultural knowledge, just as Larry Blight and Vernice Gillies do today on their fully guided Aboriginal cultural tours for Kurrah Mia.

And I’m standing in front of the statue of Mokare now, in Alison Hartman Gardens, having walked here from Dr Alexander Collie’s grave in the cemetery just past Dog Rock.

My small pilgrimage.

But I have not been alone, as I seem to have stumbled into Albany’s Christmas Festival and Pageant. Streets are closed, floats are passing and there’s a predominance of red and green.

(There’s an echo in this, as the Amity arrived in King George Sound on Christmas Day, 1826.)

I stand before Mokare as children dance and play in the Christmas “snow” being pumped out of a nozzle up on a balcony of the Albany Library.

It’s a truly multicultural scene. I rather think Mokare would have liked it.