Beloved Mr Kimberley icon Sam Lovell dies
Lovell spoke about the experience to the ABC.
“Police grabbed all of us and took us to a police station in Fitzroy [Crossing] and … the mail truck took us to Moola Bulla,” he said.
Lovell never saw his parents again after he was taken.
Lovell became a talented stockman and worked on cattle stations throughout his life, despite never being paid as part of WA’s discriminatory stolen wages policy which ran between 1936 and 1972.
Lovell worked as a stockman up and down the famous Gibb River Road.Credit: State Library of WA
It allowed the state government to withhold up to 75 per cent of an Aboriginal person’s wage, and according to the State Library of Western Australia, Lovell was paid mainly in clothes, food, tobacco and soap.
He took photos throughout his experience, which became the subject of an exhibition in his honour earlier this year.
Lovell told the ABC he had to stop work in 1962, following an injury he sustained while horse-riding.
“The bloody old manager thought I was putting it on,” he said.
“He wouldn’t send me to the hospital. Anyway, after three days living on aspirins, I had to ride on the back of a semi-trailer, 70 miles [112km] to hospital.
“The doctor went berserk.
“Anyway, they finished up sending me here to Royal Perth.”
Lovell leading a horse.Credit: State Library of WA
Lovell would go on to create Kimberley Safari Tours with his wife Rosita in 1981, marking it the first Aboriginal tourism business in WA – a venture for which he’d later be awarded the Member of the Order of Australia medal.
“I knew everything there and the people in it,” he said.
“When I decided to go into tourism, I drove around all the stations, saw all the managers, all the owners and told them what I wanted to do.
“‘Go for it, you’re right, you don’t need anything,’ they said.”
Kimberley Safari Tours was the first WA-based Aboriginal tourism business.Credit: State Library of WA
Lovell mentored a number of Kimberley Aboriginal tourism businesses, which has become one of the region’s biggest drawcards for both interstate and international tourists.
The State Library of WA exhibition about his life ran earlier this year.
“The significance of Sam Lovell’s collection and his rich contributions to the State cannot be overstated. With his box brownie camera, Sam was able to document his life from a young age and provide a unique lens and perspective on life in the North West,” library chief executive Catherine Clarke said.
Lovell was also the subject of an award-winning documentary by Marlanie Haerewa’s 2023 documentary ‘Mr Kimberley’.
