Bronwyn Bancroft A Bundjalung Woman’s Story

Bundjalung Country, known as the land of the three rivers, is located across northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, with the boundaries being roughly created by the Clarence River, the Great Dividing Range, and the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps non-Indigenous Australians would be more familiar with Bundjalung Country when they realised that towns such as Coffs Harbour, Tweed Heads and inland Lismore and Grafton are all located within its borders.

Bronwyn Bancroft is a senior Bundjalung artist, activist, storyteller, and writer, and this is her Country. Born and raised in the small town of Tenterfield, Bancroft is the daughter of Bill Bancroft, a Bundjalung man of Aboriginal and English heritage, and Dorothy Moss, a European of Scottish and Polish descent.

At high school Bancroft experienced some troubled years, but with much encouragement and support from her father she graduated from Tenterfield High School. The hard work in her final years paid off as in 1976 she was presented with the enviable choice between a place at the Australian National University (ANU) or the newly established Canberra School of Art (now ironically part of the ANU). Choosing the art school over university proved to be a watershed moment in Bancroft’s life as it