By Jeremy Cook
Two Githabul elders celebrated a significant 60 year milestone on Sunday.
Aunty Ethylene and Uncle Sam Bonner marked 60 years since officially tying the knot at their wedding in April 1964.
To commemorate the milestone, family and the one member of the bridal party still alive travelled to Warwick from all over for what Waringhehn Aboriginal Corporation chairperson and Githabul woman Melissa Chalmers described as a “very special occasion”.
“60 years is a magnificent milestone,” Ms Chalmers said.
“Ethelene and Sam play an important role in their families lives as role models,” she said.
The elders met in Yangan in the early 1960s before later marrying in Brisbane. Uncle Bonner worked at the old Emu Creek sawmill as a teenager before spending 29 years working on the railway.
Aunty Ethelene worked in domestic roles at the Queensland Country Women’s Association, Scots PGC and Slade school in her younger years.
Their wedding came seven years before Bonner’s uncle and former Senator Neville Bonner became the first Indigenous Australian to ever sit in federal parliament.
Bonner has also been a keen cricketer and played in the first Warwick Australia Day cricket carnival at Slade Park.
Ms Chalmers said just one member from the wedding’s bridal party, Bonner’s sister Aunty Emily, survived to this day.
