University
Mabo worked on a number of jobs before becoming a gardener with James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland at the age of 31. The time he spent on the campus had a massive impact on his life. In 1974 this culminated in a discussion he had with Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds, who recalled Mabo's reaction:
"...we were having lunch one day in Reynold's office when Koiki was just speaking about his land back on Mer, or Murray Island. Henry and I realised that in his mind he thought he owned that land, so we sort of glanced at each other, and then had the difficult responsibility of telling him that he didn't own that land, and that it was Crown land. Koiki was surprised, shocked and even...he said and I remember him saying 'No way, it's not theirs, it's ours'".
Read more about this topic: Eddie Mabo
Famous quotes containing the word university:
“To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or other graft upon the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine.”
—William Booth (1829–1912)
“I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)