Fred Hooper Australian Society for Limnology Conference 2017

Fred Hooper

Fred is a Murrawarri Man from the Murrawarri Nation situated between the Bokhara and Warrego Rivers which straddles what is now know and the NSW and QLD boarders in the western part of NSW and Southwest QLD. Fred grow up on the Station Settlement of Weilmoringle in a tin humpy on the banks of the Culgoa river until he was 9 years old. His family then moved to the Cotton growing town of Wee Waa in 1969 where his father worked on a cotton property. His first job was cotton chipping during school holidays and after leaving school at the end of year 8 and the age of 15 completed 2 years of a panel beating spray-painting apprenticeship. He joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1979 at the age of 17 and served 6 years in both surface ships and the Submarines. He left the Navy in 1985 and worked 9 years in the Commonwealth Public Service in NSW, SA, and QLD. He worked for community organisations in NSW and Tasmania until 2006 when he moved home to Weilmoringle where he spent 9 years as the Chairperson of the Weilmoringle Land Holding company. In 2013 he was responsible for the Murrawarri people declaring their continued Independence and Statehood from the Crown of Great Britain and is the Chairperson of the Murrawarri Peoples Council and in 2012 he became the inaugural Chair of the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations for the first 3 years and was reelected as the current Chair of NBAN in May of 2015.