Dooley Bin Bin

Dooley Bin Bin, also known as Winyirin, (c. 1900 - 24 December 1982) was a Nyangumarta man and leader of his people who is best remembered for his involvement in the Pilbara strike which took place between 1946 and 1949.

Biography Bin Bin was born around 1900 in the Great Sandy Desert and he is the son of Martukaninykaniny, a Nyangumarta woman, and the name of his father is not recorded. He grew up with his people and, at the age of 9 or 10, he is known to be in the region of what would later become Barramine Station where he assisted in clearing spinifex from the rabbit-proof fence.

He was initiated into manhood around 1911 and, as a young man, travelled through numerous parts of the area and established himself as a respected 'travelling Law-man' who held cultural authority.

By the early 1940s Bin Bin was working at Warrawagine Station and he found himself increasingly distressed about the way that his, and his people, view of the world and way of living in it was being threatened. With this in mind he joined a meeting at Skull Springs, the site of an earlier massacre, where he was nominated to speak on behalf of Don McLeod alongside Clancy McKenna who was one of his kinsmen. Bin Bin and McKenna asked that Aboriginal pastoral workers in the Pilbara region receive a minimum of thirty shillings per week (equal pay with other workers) and that, if this was not granted, they and other workers would strike. Bin Bin also wanted the strikes to trigger changes in wider social justice issues affecting Aboriginal people.

In May 1946, as a predominant strike organiser and leader, for this he was sentenced to three months hard labour.

Bin Bin would go on the be arrested numerous times throughout the strike and, in one instance, he was chained to the grill of a cell for six days while awaiting trial with a bucket on either side of him, one for water, and one for use as a toilet. Bin Bin's response to this was: ‘ever mind’, we’ll fill up their jails’ as he saw incarceration as one of the main tools of control being used.

He died there on 24 December 1982 and is buried at the station.