Pair of black RM Williams boots belonging to Neville Bonner

Neville Thomas Bonner AO was an Australian politician, and the first Indigenous Australian to become a member of the Parliament of Australia. Bonner spent much of his life working in rural Australia, something reflected in his choice of R.M. Williams boots as footwear for Parliament. Born on Ukerebagh Island on the Tweed River, New South Wales, in 1922, like many Indigenous children of his age he had little formal schooling, leaving after he had attained the third grade at the age of fifteen. Bonner spent much of his youth working as a rural labourer on properties across northern New South Wales and Queensland.