Tasma Walton says her nanna’s ‘unusual stories’ helped verify Bunurong link
A long search to “find her mob” has landed actor Tasma Walton in the middle of Federal Court fight over a large Aboriginal land claim.
South East
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Actor Tasma Walton is urging her mob to “stand united” as the battle over land stretching from southeast Melbourne to Wilsons Promontory begins in the Federal Court.
Ms Walton, who is married to TV personality Rove McManus, is among several people linked to the Frankston-based Bunurong Land Council giving evidence in court over a claim by another Indigenous group.
The rival Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council is pursuing a land claim involving 13,000sq km of territory, but this is being challenged by Bunurong members, including Ms Walton.
The court will decide if Ms Walton and others are descended from Indigenous people who “at sovereignty, held rights and interests in any part of the land and waters” covered by the land claim application.
Ms Walton, who believes she has Indigenous ancestry after taking a DNA test, told the court that her identity as a Boonwurrung/Bunurong descendant was “gradually realised” after she moved to Melbourne to film Blue Heelers TV series in 1996.
She had been taunted by racist comments as a schoolgirl in WA and when she questioned relatives about her heritage, her maternal grandmother told her there was a “Maori bloodline” in the family.
“There wasn’t the focus on mob then,” Ms Walton told the court.
She later agreed that her grandmother and mother had “avoided talking about their Aboriginality because of the oppressive laws in WA at the time”.
A three-week visit to Melbourne by Ms Walton’s nanna in the 1990s provided more clarity about her Indigenous ancestry.
Ms Walton told the court her Nanna shared “unusual stories” about Albert Park, Brighton and the Mornington Peninsula.
They included her theory on what happened to Prime Minister Harold Holt, lost off Portsea in 1967.
“She said he shouldn’t have been swimming there, that it was mermaid country,” Ms Walton said.
“Her belief was that (mermaids) took him.”
Ms Walton said when visiting Mushroom Reef at Flinders, Nanna “was a girl again” sharing stories of diving for abalone and crayfish.
She was adamant that the stories Nanna shared had been passed through the generations, dating back to Bunurong girl Eliza Nowan, believed to have been stolen from the Port Phillip region in 1833 and taken to Albany in WA by sealer Robert Gamble.
The court heard Ms Walton conducted her own research online and by 2011 was confident she had enough evidence to prove her ancestry.
She then shared what she had found with her immediate and extended family.
“My Mum said it ‘made sense’,” Ms Walton said.
Other relatives said that they had “always known”.
Ms Walton said her relatives did not offer any more details about their ancestors.
She told the court her Bunurong identity was “incredibly important”.
“To have a connection to a bloodline on country that has been around since the millennia, it’s a real tether to country, especially when so much brutality has been inflicted.
She said she felt a responsibility to “keep those fragments of cultural stories alive and reinvigorated” and urged her mob to “stand united and care for country”.
The hearing continues.