Maitland Citizen of the Year, voice of the Aboriginal community and curator of Maitland history, Lance Murray, died last week aged 78.
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Born Lancelot Kenneth Arthur Murray to an Aboriginal mother and white father near the township of Kyogle, Mr Murray’s family moved to Hexham when he was two years old.
“Hexham was a magic place to grow up in, there was no discrimination there,” Mr Murray told the Mercury during NAIDOC Week in June.
“You could fish, you could swim, you had mates who took you for what you were.”
While he became a respected and central voice pushing for the preservation of significant, local Aboriginal sites and artefacts later in life, Mr Murray didn’t connect with his own Aboriginality until his teenage years.
His wife Fay Murray said her husband always felt a power pulling him toward his Indigenous heritage.
“Once he found out about his family, he fitted in with them like a glove,” she said.
Mr Murray worked for most of his career as a fitter and turner at the Bloomfield Colliery in Ashtonfield.
He served Maitland council as an alderman in the 1980s before he devoted his later life to researching the city he loved.
In the yellowing pages of Maitland’s early history, Mr Murray unravelled and preserved convict, settler and Aboriginal voices with equal care and respect.
It was a mission, he said, which his own ancestry mandated.
“I have Aboriginal, convict and settler blood, but my DNA is Australian,” Mr Murray said.
His wife, daughters and grandchildren will remember him as a funny, cheeky and compassionate soul.
“We met in 1958 at a dance in the Town Hall,” Mrs Murray said.
“He would put me on a bus and wave me off after the dance, but I learnt years later he was walking all the way home to Hexham afterwards,” she said with a laugh. The two married in 1961 and raised a family.
“He had a chest scar from heart surgery but he would tell us and the grandkids he got it from wrestling crocs,” his daughter Alison said.
“He made me laugh so much.”
His other daughter Carolyn said many came to know her father for his outspoken conservationism but, to her, he was much more than his issues or politics.
“He was more than his heritage,” Carolyn said.
“Of course he was proud of it, but he did so much for the community.
“He was complex and challenging, but always compassionate.”
Countless children across Maitland will remember Mr Murray for his collection of Aboriginal artefacts that he would bring to schools.
He dreamed of establishing a regional museum in Maitland that spoke from even the most marginalised sides of history.
“Whatever our girls did he was always the force standing behind them,” his wife said.
“I’ll always remember his beautiful, blue eyes.”
A celebration of Mr Murray’s life will be held at the Rotunda at Stockade Hill, East Maitland, on Wednesday, September 2, at 11am. The public has been invited to attend.