Essie Coffey

Essie Coffey (born Essieina Shillingsworth Jibbah; – 3 January 1998), also known as Essieina Goodgabah and "Bush Queen of Brewarrina", was an Aboriginal Australian community worker, filmmaker, singer, and advocate for Indigenous Australians. She is known for having co-founded the Western Aboriginal Legal Service to serve western New South Wales, and for her 1978 feature film My Survival as an Aboriginal, the first documentary film directed by an Aboriginal woman. She also served on a number of community organisations and government bodies. She lived in Brewarrina for much of her life.

Early life and education Essieina Shillingsworth Jibbah was born near Goodooga in northern New South Wales, Australia, 1941, or 1942. The name "Essieina" means "flower of the honey tree". Her father, Donald Goodgabah, was an elder of the Muruwari people, ) and Steve Gordon, she co-founded the Aboriginal Movement in Brewarrina and continues to operate out of its main office in Dubbo and a second office in Bourke.

In 1974, when a huge flood hit Brewarrina, Coffey was called upon, along with Tombo Winters, Steve Gordon, and Phil Eyre, to mobilise the Aboriginal community to build levees. Winters pulled the workers off the levee when he realised that it would not protect West Brewarrina ("Dodge City"), where most of the Aboriginal community lived, and the SES was not providing a boat to ferry people from Dodge City to the town.

She also served on several government bodies and Aboriginal community organisations. She was an elected member of the NSW Aborigines Advisory Council,

She was an inaugural member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991,

She also had a deep interest in women's issues, and was co-founder of Magunya Aboriginal Women's Issue, helped to create the first women's knock-out football team in northwestern NSW.

She then became an active filmmaker.

In 1978 she directed My Survival as an Aboriginal, a documentary film produced by Martha Ansara. In the film, which was the first documentary to be directed by an Aboriginal woman, Coffey relates what happened to her people in Brewarrina. Romaine Moreton of the National Film and Sound Archive wrote of the film:

Personal life Coffey lived in Brewarrina for most of her life, and the film was produced by CAAMA Productions. The film was made for series 3 of Australia by Numbers, a TV series commissioned by SBS Television in collaboration with state agencies featuring short films by emerging filmmakers from South Australia, the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria.

Death and legacy Coffey died of a common cold, owing to her immune system having been weakened by kidney failure,

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