Robert Tudawali, known as Bobby or Bob Wilson, was an Australian actor and Indigenous activist.
10 Facts About Robert Tudawali
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Robert Tudawali is known for his leading role in the 1955 Australian film Jedda, a role for which he was specifically chosen by the film's director, Charles Chauvel and his wife Elsa, and which made him the first Indigenous Australian film star, Tudawali served as vice-president of the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights.
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Robert Tudawali was born and raised on Melville Island in the Northern Territory to Tiwi parents.
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Robert Tudawali was a leading Australian rules footballer as a youth, and he alternated several times between Aboriginal and white society.
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Robert Tudawali used the name Bobby Wilson in Darwin when he travelled there by canoe in the late 1930s, using the surname of his father's employer.
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Robert Tudawali was an orderly with the Royal Australian Air Force, worked briefly in an army store and mechanical workshop, and as a waiter before becoming an actor.
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Robert Tudawali became the first Indigenous Australian film star as a result of playing the lead role, Marbuck, in the 1955 Australian film Jedda.
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Frank Hardy 8.
Robert Tudawali served as vice-president of the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights in 1966 and, working with activist Dexter Daniels, trade unionist and activist Brian Manning and author Frank Hardy, fought to highlight the poor wages and conditions of Aboriginal stockmen in the Northern Territory, which culminated in the Wave Hill walk-off in 1966.
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Robert Tudawali had organised to give a series of talks to unionists throughout Australia in support of the stockmen when the Northern Territory administration banned any travel by Robert Tudawali due to the tuberculosis he was suffering at the time.
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Robert Tudawali was married to Peggy Wogait in 1948 and they lived at the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve ; later he married a woman named Nancy.