Harry Mills: Senior Yindjibarndi Elder kept language, culture and memory alive

Old Fella’s life story may be the most incredible yarn you’ve never heard Sadly, many will now never hear it firsthand after senior Yindjibarndi Elder Harry Mills quietly passed away in Leramugadu (Roebourne) at the beginning of May 2026. I had the privilege of sitting with old fella and listening to his wangga (story) over the years. No two tellings were ever quite the same. Each time, another detail emerged from memory. The details mattered because the story was real. Lived. Carried in memory for more than 70 years. Born on Yindjibarndi Ngurra in the 1940s as Arkie Watkin, Harry was taken from his mother as a small child during the Stolen Generations. Welfare police arrived by truck and removed children from camps and stations across the Pilbara, transporting them hundreds of kilometres south to the Carnarvon Mission. But Old Fella never accepted that his story would end there. As a young teenager, he and another boy, Nicholas, escaped the mission and began walking north — back toward family, language and Country. They travelled across harsh country with only small rations, surviving from waterhole to waterhole. Harry recalled the bush meals vividly even in old age: goanna cooked on the fire, fresh fish, bush damper. He remembered the fear of welfare patrols searching for them, and the kindness of Elders who hid them along the way. Eventually they reached as far as Onslow before community Elders, fearful the boys would face severe punishment if caught, convinced them to return. The journey became almost 1,000 kilometres there and back. Yet even after returning to the mission, Old Fella held onto culture and language privately. He carried Yindjibarndi identity through years of displacement and separation. I heard Old Fella tell this story many times. No two times were the same, as there was always a new detail that he recalled; whether it was the name of someone he and Nicholas met while walking north from the Carnarvon Mission back towards the Pilbara. Or a particular waterhole where they stopped and cooked a gurrumanthu (goanna). One time he told me all about the boots he found before escaping the mission — boots he said he almost never took off because they were too precious to lose. Later in life, another Elder recognised him while working in a remote town and returned him to Yindjibarndi Country, reconnecting him with family he had been stolen from as a child. But by then, tragedy had repeated itself. Harry had lost connection with his own wife and children down south, beginning another lifelong search for family. Even in his 80s, with fading eyesight and hearing, he still spoke often about wanting to see his children again. “I want them to see my face before I go,” he once said in an interview. That was Old Fella. Beneath the extraordinary survival story was a man whose greatest love was family. The day before he passed away I visited him at Yaandina Aged Care in Leramugadu, and we spoke about Ngurra, recent rains, and family. Country remained at the centre of his thinking. We talked about the Yindjibarndi fight in the Federal Court. He asked me to pass on the word “Wajiwarlu” (congratulations) to Yindjibarndi leaders and the community. Harry was a living memory holder of a generation that endured forced removals, mission life and the attempted erasure of culture. Yet kept language and identity alive. He, like his peers, were incredibly strong. You could still see that in old fella until his final day. His passing is not just a loss all of us who held him dear. It is a loss for the Pilbara, and for the nation. Too often Australia only understands history through institutions, legislation and court rulings. Old Fella carried history differently. Through lived memory. Through songs in language. I remember he would sit in the Leramugadu cafe, where his great grandchildren made coffee, singing loudly in Yindjibarndi. He was so proud. You could hear the entire 20th century in his yarns. His story deserved far greater national attention than it ever received. But perhaps that was fitting too. Harry never sought fame. He simply wanted his family to know who he was, and for his wangga (story) to survive him. But now he’s gone, his story must live on.