The Australian Women's Register

Maureen Watson was born in 1931 in Rockhampton, Queensland, of Biri descent. She spent her early life in rural Queensland, left school at 13, married, and had five children.

She later returned to school and matriculated, and then moved to Brisbane with her five sons to begin an arts degree at the University of Queensland in 1970. She completed two years of her course before the pressures of raising a family forced her to quit. Over succeeding years, she emerged as a poet, singer, actor and political activist.

Moving to Sydney, she set up the Aboriginal Peoples Gallery in Redfern in 1981. She was at the forefront of the Aboriginal protests against the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in 1982, and was arrested three times while participating in demonstrations.

Black Reflections, a collection of her stories and poems, was published in 1982, followed by Kaiyu’s Waiting, a school kit of children’s stories, in 1984. She was the narrator for Robert Bropho’s film, Mundu Nyuringu, in 1983, and she appeared in Jack Davis’ play, The Honey Spot, in its 1986 tour of Victoria and New South Wales.

Storytelling remained her major medium for promoting Aboriginal culture, and she has travelled widely in Australia, New Zealand and Europe to give storytelling presentations. Her stories told about the Aboriginal experience of urban life.