The Dawn is at Hand

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) was an Aboriginal Australian poet, teacher and a government and community worker in Brisbane where she was born in 1920. From the 1960s onwards she represented the interests of Aborigines in Australia and abroad.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal published six volumes of poetry in Australia, of which this is a selection. The distinguished composer Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music and an Australian himself, set her poems as a choral symphony under the title "The Dawn is at Hand" for the official celebrations of the Australian bicentenary. He has said of her work, ‘No auto-didact might be thought to have her visionary acuity. With the brilliance and originality of her poetry into which her aboriginal traditions are moulded naturally and subtly, classification of her work can be no more than approximate. Oodgeroo Noonuccal has distinguished herself as the spokesperson of world justice.’