Redland

Distinguished and Famous people from Redland

📖 Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Oodgeroo Noonuccal grew up at One Mile on Minjerribah, North Stradbroke Island, and attended Dunwich State School. Her father taught the children respect for their Noonuccal heritage, while fishing, boating and community life formed early memories. Later known nationally as a poet, educator and civil rights campaigner, she also served as a signaller in the Australian Women’s Army Service during the Second World War. Her childhood schooling encouraged a love of reading and writing despite the restrictions imposed on Aboriginal people. The island association runs through family and culture, giving her literary and public work a deeply rooted local setting.

🎨 Delvene Cockatoo-Collins

Delvene Cockatoo-Collins returned to Minjerribah in 2012 after years away, reconnecting family life and artistic practice with Quandamooka Country. Working from Goompi, Dunwich, she draws on family experience and responds to historical images and texts. Her designs reached a major international audience through the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in 2018: she created the prize-winners’ medals, a commemorative medal and the large white humpback whale Migalu used in the opening ceremony. The work joins contemporary design with stories rooted in the island. Her local association is an active practice and a return home, rather than simply an address on a biography.

🏛️ Vernon Christie

Vernon Christie retired to Redland Bay after leaving the Victorian parliament in 1973. Earlier he had served as Speaker and represented Ivanhoe, combining parliamentary independence with a strong interest in conservation and the arts. Retirement did not mean political silence: he criticised the Queensland government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and encouraged voters seeking change. Redland Bay was an explicitly documented later home, following a working life spread across business, public service and campaigns to protect the Yarra Valley.