Moses Yoolpee

Moses Yoolpee also recorded as Moses Mack and Budgeree Balyah (c. 1865 - 13 July 1940) was a Karuwali–Mithaka elder, stockman and tracker and translator for the Queensland Police. Despite being taken from his family at a young age he held significant amounts of the cultural knowledge of his people and spoke many Australian Aboriginal languages from the Channel Country region. While with the Mack family it appears that he was treated as family and he took on the Mack surname; also, while living with them, he attended Scotch College and this featured greatly in his later storytelling.

Work in the pastoral industry On his return to the Channel Country, Yoolpee began working at Mooraberrie Station as a stockman, where he was employed by William and Laura Duncan. He worked there for many years and features heavily in the writings of their daughter Alice Duncan-Kemp. It is perhaps because of his influence that she believed that "[Aboriginal people] were the true owners of the land".

While Yoolpee had been away many of his family had experienced and been displaced by violent 'frontier conflict', with many forced on to missions or pastoral stations. Mooraberrie was considered by many Karuwali and Mithaka peoples to be a sanctuary due to the management of the Duncan family who encouraged cross-cultural respect and learning.

At Mooraberrie, Yoolpee lived in a gunyah, a form of humpy, with the other Aboriginal stockmen and partnered with Maggie Muttamurrie, who also worked on the station, until her death in 1923.

Legacy

Moses Cone, a mountain in Diamantina National Park, is said to have been named for him.