Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin
Renowned Denmark photographer Nic Duncan and Menang – Gnudju Elder and WA Women’s Hall of Fame inductee, Aunty Carol Pettersen, had a brilliant idea while camping two years ago.
At the time, expressions of interest were called for projects to mark Albany’s bicentenary of white settlement.
Sitting by the campfire east of Albany, Nic asked Aunty Carol how she felt about the approaching milestone, a conversation which sparked a dual legacy for the two women.
Aunty Carol later named this legacy, Binalup, Menang/First Light, First People, which will open as a photographic exhibition in the Albany Town Hall’s Carol Pettersen Gallery on June 24 and will run until July 26.
The exhibition includes Nic’s giant portraits of 19 Elders and 10 other signifi cant Menang people drawing on nine portraits exhibited in 2023 during NAIDOC Week.
Aunty Carol OAM, 84, has served for more than four decades as a Ministerial Indigenous adviser, Justice of the Peace, storyteller, landcare activist, cultural educator and mentor.
She wanted an exhibition which would tell the stories history books failed to include about the lives and contributions of Noongars.
“In history books there’s reference to natives and native camps but our people weren’t humanised – that really cuts,” Aunty Carol said.
“I know the work my grandfather and grandmother did – our people shore and shepherded the sheep, built fences and later helped with pasturing the paddocks.
“We had to do poison picking, pull these little plants (Gastrolobia), wherever the State was being developed from Albany to Esperance.”
Nic’s portraits for the exhibitions come with 550-word stories about each person both contemporary and historical.
Though exhibition portraits will be 1200cm wide, participants will receive a smaller portrait of themselves as well as a transcript of their story.
A book of the stories is planned along with a digital display for schools where some of the Elders will speak.
Nic found recording the stories an emotional task: “Some of it’s heartbreaking and some heart-warming,” she says. “Some days, I’d walk or drive home in tears.”
Overall, the project has both challenged and changed Nic.
In being Menang-led it aimed to shine a light on the people’s contributions to their community and to inspire Noongar youngsters.
Throughout, a panel of Elders selected participants from across all family groups, collaborated on interview questions and guided Nic through every stage of the process.
“Many of these Elders whose stories are being shared had disadvantaged childhoods and have gone on to achieve amazing things,” she said.
“So, it doesn’t matter what your childhood is like, you can achieve anything you put your mind to.”
Aunty Carol said her own stories went back five generations to ‘what our memory holds’ and were told to her by her grandfather Johnny Knapp born in 1876.
Johnny’s mother, Jackbam, recorded the Menang language with amateur anthropologist Daisy Bates.
Aunty Carol, who grew up in bush near Jerramungup is one of 18 children born to a white man and semitribal Noongar woman, wrote the autobiography, Following the Spirt of the Yirdah Bird. The yirdah bird, western spinebill, is her totem.
This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 18 June 2026.
