Country, Spirit and Belonging: The Wiradjuri in Wellington Valley, 2012.

Country, Spirit and Belonging: The Wiradjuri in Wellington Valley centres on the history and community of Wellington, a small town located in central New South Wales, traditional home to the Wiradjuri people. Gallois’ grandfather Ernest Moulton (1905–1966), a British migrant who settled in Wellington in 1944, purchased the local paper, the Wellington Times, and as editor became a prominent conservative voice in the community for the next twenty-one years.

Country, Spirit and Belonging: The Wiradjuri in Wellington Valley is a sixty four page newspaper–styled publication featuring contributions by and perspectives on the local Aboriginal community as a gesture toward writing their narratives back into the recorded history of the area.

Country, Spirit and Belonging: The Wiradjuri in Wellington Valley represent an intimate history of Wellington’s race relations, the processes of colonisation and the community’s tentative steps towards reconciliation, highlighting some of the complexities of cross–cultural engagement as well as issues of censorship and selective historicising.

This project was assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.