Australian Dictionary of Biography

Sister Ellie Gaffney, 1974

National Archives of Australia

Ellie Joan Gaffney (1932–2007), nurse, midwife, writer, and Indigenous rights activist, was born on 18 August 1932 on Waiben (Thursday Island), Queensland, youngest child of Indonesian-born Thomas (Tommy/Tom) Loban and his Torres Strait Islander wife Gertrude (Geti), née Summers. Tom Loban, originally Simeon Sadir, had been kidnapped as a child from Banda Neira, a small island in the Maluku (Moluccas) group, by Reginald Hockings, a pearler with whom he later worked as a spy for the Australian Naval Intelligence Service. Geti’s mother Dadu was descended from Peid of the dugong and crocodile clan, leader of the Panai people of Mabuyag/Mabuiag (Jervis Island), and her father Jacob was the son of Frank Summers, a pioneer of the pearling industry in the Torres Strait. Of the Lobans’s nine children, only four survived: Ted, Jean, Frank, and Ellie.

Tom Loban was granted permanent exemption from the provisions of the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act 1901 in 1920 in recognition of his service during World War I, enabling his family greater freedom of movement than other Indigenous people in Queensland. However, as a mixed Asian-Indigenous family, the Lobans were not permitted to live on Mabuiag, as it was designated a reserve for Islanders only. They instead moved to the northernmost region of Cape York Peninsula, near the Cowal Creek Aboriginal mission (later Injinoo), in 1937, where the Loban children attended the Anglican-run school and were taught by a Badu Islander. At the outbreak of World War II they returned to Waiben. Ted Loban, Ellie’s older brother, enlisted for service on 15 December 1939, serving in the Middle East and Greece; seriously wounded in 1941, he was discharged in 1942. In February 1942, following the Japanese raid on Darwin, Waiben was evacuated, and Ellie, her mother, and sister Jean were sent to Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement. From there they moved to Brisbane for several years before returning to Waiben in 1947.

Ellie had attended the mission school at Cowal Creek and the Thursday Island State School for Coloured Children but had not returned to school after the family’s wartime evacuation. She began working as an assistant nurse in her late teens and, after catching up on her schooling with the help of a Catholic nun, commenced nursing training at Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1954. Despite homesickness, financial struggles, and cultural dislocation, she excelled in her training, earning praise for her dedication and efficiency. After passing her fourth-year examinations in 1957, she briefly returned to Waiben to work at the hospital before undertaking midwifery training at Brisbane Women’s Hospital. She went home to Waiben in 1961 as a double-certificated nurse and commenced work at Thursday Island Hospital.

Waiben, like most Queensland towns, was racially segregated. Ellie was permitted to live in the white quarters, where notices were displayed advising nursing sisters ‘not [to] attend coloured [Islanders’] parties or homes’ (Gaffney 1989, 43). She believed that the nursing care she provided was ‘some of the best … if not the best’ (Gaffney 1989, 45) ever seen at the hospital. Frank Summers, Ellie’s great-grandfather, had been chairman of the committee that established Thursday Island Hospital, but this did not earn her special treatment. After having two children out of wedlock she was dismissed and banned from working at the hospital for six years. She appealed the decision but the hospital board would not reinstate her due to its disapproval of her private life.

Responsible for her children and ailing father, Ellie took a job as a kitchen maid at a local hotel. With no opportunities for nursing work on Waiben, she accepted the position of hospital matron at Yarrabah, a former Anglican Aboriginal mission, then run by the Queensland government, near Cairns, in 1963. Later she described her role there as part nursing sister, part ‘doctor, housekeeper, cook, laundress, domestic, counsellor and money lender’ (Gaffney 1989, 56). On 8 July 1967 she married Anthony (Tony) Gaffney at Cairns; they would have one child. She continued nursing after her marriage, working at Cairns, Brisbane, Alice Springs, and Darwin.

In 1979, when Ellie learned that the position of nursing superintendent at Thursday Island Hospital would soon become available, she decided to make herself the best candidate by enrolling in a diploma of nursing administration at the Queensland Institute of Technology even though it meant moving her family to Brisbane. She gained the qualification but was not selected for the job. The hospital board claimed that the successful candidate, a non–Torres Strait Islander, had superior qualifications—a claim challenged by the Torres Strait Forum, an advocacy group formed to investigate instances of discrimination. Ellie’s was its first case. Protesting ‘most strongly,’ the forum pointed out that Ellie was a trained nurse with excellent qualifications and ‘twenty-six years of continuous nursing experience’ (Torres News 1980, 18), and that overlooking her contravened government policies of self-management, but no action was taken.

The Gaffney family had moved to Waiben before learning that Ellie was not the successful candidate. They decided to remain there and Ellie, ‘repulsed by the dirty politics played by men on the [hospital board] who knew nothing about health care’ (Gaffney 1989, 49), decided to give up nursing. In 1980 she started working for Aboriginal Hostels Ltd, helping to establish and run the Jumula Dubbins Aboriginal Hostel, which provided accommodation and hosted community events and workshops. During this time she began writing letters to the editor of the Torres News, signalling her support for various community initiatives, from Torres Strait creole language classes to increased freight subsidies on food items (resulting in cheaper prices on the islands). In 1982 she was appointed an agent for the Department of Social Security to make information about government pensions, benefits, and allowances available locally. Working out of the hostel office, she helped people register for Commonwealth benefits, which served the dual purpose of demonstrating the need for an office of the Commonwealth Employment Service on the island and removing Islanders from the influence of the Queensland Department of Native Affairs.

An active member of the Island Coordinating Council, Ellie wanted Torres Strait Islanders to be heard on matters of importance to them. One way to achieve this was through the creation of locally produced radio and television content. She joined the Queensland Advisory Council for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in the early 1980s and was instrumental in establishing the Torres Strait Islander Media Association in 1985. That year she attended the United Nation’s third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya. In 1986 she was appointed to the Council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS, later the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies). Working tirelessly for national recognition for Torres Strait Islanders, she joined the movement for the Torres Strait to secede from Australia in 1988. The movement did not accept ‘the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission but demanded a Torres Strait Commission run by Islanders’ (Torres News 1988, 1). Ellie hoped it would ‘force the government to grant [Torres Strait Islanders] recognition as a race in their own right’ (Gaffney 1989, 125). The hidden problem of domestic violence was another issue she highlighted, attributing it to Torres Strait Islander women’s lack of equality: the Torres Strait was ‘like a Third World Country’ (Torres News 1989, 3) in its failure to recognise the rights of women.

The Mura Kosker Sorority, established in 1988 under Ellie’s leadership, aimed to raise the status of Torres Strait Islander women. In 1989, as president, she attended the United Nations World Council of Indigenous People meeting in Geneva to be ‘a messenger for these women, to take their message to the platform of the world’ (Torres News 31 October 2007, 16). She had received a grant from the AIAS in 1984 to write a memoir, published as Somebody Now: The Autobiography of Ellie Gaffney, a Woman of Torres Strait in 1989. She published a second book, Mura solwata kosker: We Saltwater Women, on the Mura Kosker Sorority in 2006.

Ellie was appointed AM in 1990. In 1993 she stepped down as chairperson of the Torres Strait Co-operative Society Ltd, having served as a director since 1981 and chair for the previous four years. Two long-term projects she had been involved in were completed over the next two years: the Lena Passi Women’s Shelter (1994), and Star of the Sea Home (1995). However, when a new community health centre was opened on Waiben in 1997, she joined the team as manager, working there until 2000.

Ill-suited to retirement, Ellie, affectionately known as Bebe Ellie, continued to engage in community activities, writing letters to the editor of the Torres News and serving on the committee of the Mura Kosker Sorority, until her death. Predeceased by her husband and survived by her three daughters, Yasmin, Whitney, and Maryann, she died on 13 October 2007. A pioneering Torres Strait Islander woman who dedicated her life to empowering others and advocating for justice and equality, she is remembered as a ‘true Woman of the Torres Strait’ (Torres News 24 October 2007, 4). Her tombstone was unveiled in 2010.

Odette Best (Yugambeh, Goreng Goreng, Boonthamurra) and Abby Slinger (Wiradjuri) co-wrote the article.