Remembering our Indigenous Diggers

Raymond and  Yarran Finn leading the horse to the Bourke ANZAC Day march. Photo TWH

Twenty-one-year-old Yarran Finn and his father Raymond Finn led the Anzac Day march down Oxley Street in Bourke on Friday to honour the memory of local Wayilwan man Trooper Alfred Whye from Gongolgon.

Mr Finn also re-enacted a march of the Australian Light Horse by leading his horse from the Bourke showground to the beginning of the Anzac parade in Sturt Street.

He was received with enthusiastic applause as he and his horse – supplied by local horse enthusiast Ross Gale – entered the Bourke Cenotaph precinct.

Yarran also laid a wreath at the Bourke Cenotaph in honour of Trooper Whye and after the service he was mobbed by people wanting to get a photo with him in his Light Horse uniform.

Trooper Alfred Whye, who fought in the Boer War in South Africa, was being recognised because of his exemplary service as one of Australia’s first indigenous diggers – see more on Trooper Whye below.

During the wreath-laying, retired Navy Chaplain Lieutenant Commander Owen Davies also laid a wreath with Mr Finn to remember Aboriginal people who died in the Frontier Wars during the colonial settlement of Australia.

Yarran’s father, former stockman and Wangkangurru Elder, Raymond Finn, has made it his mission to highlight the sacrifices of Aboriginal soldiers and their military service to Australia. […]

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