Aunty Winnie Quagliotti (née Terrick) was a prominent Elder of the Wurundjeri community. She was passionate about the need to preserve cultural heritage in Victoria and was admired for her pragmatic solutions to the issues affecting her people.
Aunty Winnie was born at Koondrook-Barham on the border of New South Wales and Victoria to William Terrick and Jessie (née Wandin) and was one of ten children. She lived on Coranderrk mission where her father was a truck driver and would catch the bus into Melbourne with her cousin and stay with family in Fitzroy. It was there she witnessed the birth of the Aboriginal civil rights movement. Winnie married Edward Mullins, whom she met on a rabbiting trip to Deniliquin, New South Wales and had 2 children before separating. Winnie fostered many more children over the years. While in Sydney, she met Paul Quagliotti, a man from Trieste in Italy and the two settled in the Melbourne suburb of Doveton in 1968.
A few years later Aunty Winnie and her brother helped form an association with other local families to deliver housing, welfare and employment services to the Aboriginal community in Dandenong. It was incorporated as the Dandenong and District Aborigines Co-operative Society Ltd (DDACSL) in 1975 and Winnie was the organisation's first chairperson, a position she held until 1988.
She was the founding member of the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation Cultural Heritage Council Incorporated In 1985 and was elected as its Chair and spokesperson, in recognition of her ability to build united fronts on issues such as land rights. As a highly respected Elder of the Wurundjeri people, Aunty Winnie was called on by members of local councils, state and federal ministers and business leaders and even had an audience with the Queen. She educated communities on the need to preserve and revive Aboriginal culture.
Aunty Winnie protested against the arrival of the tall ships in Melbourne as part of the nation's bicentenary celebrations in 1988. The image of her standing defiantly in her possum skin cloak is a powerful one and inspired a mural commissioned by the International Labour Organisation, which reflected Aunty Winnie's image onto a building in Wall Street, New York.
Sadly, she passed away after a stroke at only 56 years of age in 1988. Obituaries ran in newspapers and on television, and hundreds attended her funeral. The following year, her image once again adorned a Moomba float in tribute. Aunty Winnie is buried at her beloved Coranderrk Cemetery.
Even though I never got to meet her Aunty Winnie is everything I aspire to be – a strong, empowered, proud Wurundjeri woman who would do anything to help her community. Her love for community and her many children continues to inspire me to do better and be better. I hope in the future I can be even half the leader she was.