Margaret Kay

Margaret Kay (circa 1904 – 5 November 1967) was a Bundjalung museum owner and caretaker of a sacred site which, through her efforts, was first gazetted as a reserve and then incorporated into a national park.

Biography Kay was born in the Richmond River area at Broadwater, New South Wales to a Minyangbal mother. At the age of ten, she was removed with her brother by the Aboriginal Protection Board to a home at Parramatta, in western Sydney. She then entered domestic service with a family called Arthur, for whom she worked from about 1918 until the late 1950s, firstly in Sydney, and from about 1930 in Queensland, at a station near Julia Creek. Kay received a bequest of £50 at Mrs Arthur's death in 1948, and in the late 1950s, retired and bought a house at Tweed Heads, on the north coast of New South Wales.

Kay located a bora ring near Tweed Heads, which she had been shown by relatives. It was overgrown and the mounds were being worn away. Kay cleared and restored it at a period when conserving Aboriginal sites was unusual. In 1980, its management was taken over by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service,

Kay also collected Aboriginal artefacts, which she displayed in her home as an Aboriginal museum. Kay herself made coloured sand art in bottles, sand paintings and shell work in addition to crocheting, sewing, painting and drawing. Late in her life, she took part in the opening ceremony of the Opal Hostel for Aborigines in Brisbane, giving Queensland governor Sir Henry Abel Smith an official gift.

Kay had hypertension and diabetes for some years before her death from infectious hepatitis at the Murwillumbah Hospital on 5 November 1967.

The Lower Tweed River Historical Society was able to purchase her artefacts and some of Kay's artworks, including are held in the Minjungbal Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Museum.