LULU — HIDDEN, NOT LOST - The Anaiwan ancestor at the beginning of my family story
Every family carries names.
Some names appear clearly in birth certificates, marriage records and official files. Others survive through whispered conversations, old photographs, family memory and the stories passed from one generation to the next.
Lulu is one of those names.
In my family history, Lulu is remembered as the last full-blood Anaiwan woman in my paternal line. The family account says she was imprisoned at seven years of age for being Blak and nothing more.
That is not simply a story about one child. It is a story about what happens when a government, a police force, a prison system and a society decide that an Aboriginal child can be removed, confined or controlled because of who she is.
It is also a story about survival.
Lulu was not erased. Her name continued through her descendants. Her bloodline continued through the Quinn, Duval, Bristow, Whitfield and Newman families. Her descendants continued to work, raise families, ride horses, survive discrimination and carry an identity that colonial Australia repeatedly tried to conceal.
Lulu was hidden in the records, but she was never lost.
Who was Lulu?
Family research identifies Lulu through several names, including Mary Ann, Maryann Quinn, Lulu and names recorded as Mahrakah or Mahrakan.
These variations are not unusual in Aboriginal family history. Names were often written down according to what a European official believed they heard. Names also changed through marriage, employment, missions, protection systems and the practical need to survive.
A published genealogical and cultural report concerning Bullcorronda, now known as Bulagaranda or Mount Yarrowyck, identifies a Mary Ann Quinn as an Aboriginal woman associated with the Walcha area. The report records that she had children with Maurice Quinn and places her birth in the 1820s or early 1830s. It also records descendants connected with the Quinn, Duval, Bristow and other families. Bullcorronda report, Office of the Registrar, Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW)
This published material is important because it provides independent support for the existence of Mary Ann Quinn as an Aboriginal woman connected with the New England region and a continuing family network.
It does not, by itself, prove every detail of the family story. It does not independently confirm Lulu’s childhood imprisonment, nor does it conclusively establish every earlier relationship attributed to Milbona and Corumba.
That distinction matters.
Family knowledge and documentary evidence should not be treated as enemies. They should be read together, honestly and respectfully.
A child behind a colonial wall
The most painful part of Lulu’s story is her age.
Seven years old. A child.
The family account is that Lulu was imprisoned because she was Blak and nothing more. No crime is remembered. No wrongdoing is identified. What remains is the image of a child placed behind a wall by a system that treated Aboriginal identity as a problem to be managed.
It is important not to invent details that have not yet been located. The exact place, date, legal authority and circumstances of Lulu’s confinement remain matters for further archival research.
But the absence of a surviving record does not make the family memory meaningless.
Aboriginal families were often recorded by institutions that did not value their voices. Names were changed. Ages were guessed. Relationships were omitted. Children were separated from parents and communities. Aboriginal people were classified, moved, employed, confined and described through the language of government officials.
A missing record is not proof that nothing happened.
An incomplete record is not an incomplete life.
If Lulu was imprisoned at seven for being Blak, then her experience belongs within the broader history of Aboriginal people being controlled by laws and systems that denied their humanity, their family connections and their right to live freely on Country.
The moral truth remains clear even while the historical details continue to be investigated: no child should be caged because of the colour of their skin or the identity of their people.
Anaiwan Country and belonging
Lulu’s story belongs to the wider Anaiwan and New England cultural landscape.
Bulagaranda, formerly known as Mount Yarrowyck, is recognised as Anaiwan Country. The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service describes the area as a place where Anaiwan people have lived, travelled, cared for and managed Country since time immemorial. It is now jointly managed by the Anaiwan people and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. NSW National Parks — Bulagaranda Aboriginal Area
Country is not simply a point on a map.
It is family, ceremony, responsibility, memory, language, movement and belonging. Aboriginal families moved through connected landscapes according to kinship, marriage, work, ceremony, obligation and survival. Colonial boundaries did not erase those relationships.
That is why Lulu’s story cannot be reduced to a single surname or a single town.
Her family connections extend through Walcha, Armidale, Tingha, Uralla, Nundle and the broader New England region. Those places are not isolated dots. They are part of a living network of Aboriginal families who continued despite invasion, dispossession, protection policies, racial classification and pressure to hide their identity.
From Lulu to Granny Duval
One of the most important distinctions in this family history is the difference between Lulu and Granny Duval.
Family research places Lulu, remembered as Mary Ann Quinn, in the generation before Mary Quinn, who later married James Duval and became known as Granny Duval.
The Bullcorronda material records Mary Quinn’s connection with James Duval and identifies the Duval family among the descendants of Mary Ann Quinn. It also records that Mary Duval, née Quinn, had twelve children. Two of them, Frank and Jack Duval, became accomplished horsemen, jockeys and trainers. Family research and the Bullcorronda record
This matters because Aboriginal history is often told only through suffering.
Lulu’s story contains suffering, but it does not end there, or here.
Her descendants were not merely people appearing in police reports, protection-board files or records of poverty. They were workers, parents, horsemen, jockeys, trainers, travellers and community members.
Frank and Jack Duval carried their skill far beyond the New England tablelands. They competed, trained horses and earned respect in the racing world. Their achievements demonstrate that Aboriginal excellence was present even when Aboriginal identity was ignored, concealed or denied.
The family was already there.
They were working, riding, raising children and surviving.
They were hiding in plain sight.
The women who carried the family forward
Lulu’s story is also a story about Aboriginal women.
Women carried names through marriages, family separations, changing records and social pressure. They raised children while navigating systems designed to control their lives. They preserved knowledge when it was unsafe to speak openly. They adapted when necessary without surrendering the truth of who they were.
Through Lulu and the generations that followed came Granny Duval, Margaret Bristow, Rita Alma Whitfield, my father Brian Alfred Newman and then me.
My grandmother, Nanna Rita, was born in 1914. She preserved the memory of a long line of jockeys and carried family knowledge that written records did not always explain.
My father was told that our family was Māori. Later, Nanna Rita corrected that story and made clear that Aboriginal ancestry ran through the family.
That experience is part of what I mean by “Hidden No More”.
Our identity was not lost.
It was concealed because concealment could be safer than disclosure. Fear forced many Aboriginal people to hide in plain sight. Assimilation, racial abuse, child removal, employment discrimination and social shame all taught families that revealing the truth could come at a cost.
Lulu’s descendants survived that pressure.
Today, we are reclaiming the story.
Lulu and the prison system
My own working life later brought me into the prison system.
I wore the keys. I walked the landings. I heard the steel doors close and listened to people plead to be seen as human beings rather than numbers.
That experience changed the way I understand Lulu.
It is unnatural to lock another human being in a cage. It is even more disturbing when the people behind those cages are Aboriginal brothers and sisters who remain over-represented in the prison system.
The statistics matter, but the names matter more.
Every number is a person. Every person has a family. Every family carries grief when someone is imprisoned, injured or dies in custody.
That grief becomes constant Sorry Business for too many Aboriginal communities.
Lulu’s story connects the first cage to the later ones.
The child imprisoned in the family story and the Aboriginal people I encountered behind prison walls are separated by generations, but they are connected by a system that has too often treated Aboriginal lives as problems rather than lives of equal value.
I do not tell Lulu’s story to create hatred.
I tell it because truth is necessary for understanding. Understanding is necessary for change.
What is documented, what is remembered and what remains open
The responsible way to tell Lulu’s story is to preserve both its emotional truth and its evidentiary limits.
Family history remembers:
Lulu as the last full-blood Anaiwan woman in my paternal line;
Lulu as Mary Ann, Maryann Quinn, Mahrakah or Mahrakan;
her connection to Milbona and Corumba;
her imprisonment at seven years of age for being Blak and nothing more;
her descendants through the Quinn, Duval, Bristow, Whitfield and Newman families.
Published and documentary material supports:
the existence of Mary Ann Quinn as an Aboriginal woman connected with the Walcha and New England region;
her relationship with Maurice Quinn;
the continuing Quinn, Duval, Bristow and related family networks;
the place of Anaiwan families within the Bullcorronda and wider New England cultural area.
Further research is still required into:
the exact circumstances of Lulu’s childhood imprisonment;
the place and date of her confinement;
the official records that may identify the institution or authority involved;
the precise relationship between the names Mary Ann, Mary Quinn, Lulu, Mahrakah and Mahrakan;
the documentary links between Milbona, Corumba, Lulu and the later Duval line.
Uncertainty is not failure.
It is an instruction to keep looking.
Why Lulu matters now
Lulu matters because she reminds us that family history is not an exercise in collecting names. It is an act of restoration.
To find Lulu is to find a child who was treated as disposable and an ancestor who refused to disappear.
To find Lulu is to understand that the history of Aboriginal Australia is not only a history of massacres, removals, prisons and discrimination. It is also a history of survival, achievement, family, Country, work, courage and memory.
To find Lulu is to understand that the official record is not always the whole truth.
The records can be silent while the family remembers.
A surname can change while the bloodline continues.
A person can be hidden while their descendants carry them forward.
That is why Lulu is central to my story.
She is part of the reason I speak about Aboriginal justice, human dignity, over-representation and the need for change. She is part of the reason I continue to advocate for people whose voices have been minimised or ignored.
Her story reaches from an Anaiwan child behind a wall to the work I do today.
Hidden no more
I cannot change what happened to Lulu.
I cannot give back the years that were taken from her.
But I can refuse to let her be forgotten.
I can speak her name. I can protect the family record. I can separate evidence from assumption without surrendering the truth of family memory. I can teach the next generation that Aboriginal identity was never something to be ashamed of.
Lulu’s bloodline continues through her descendants.
It continues through Granny Duval, the Duval horsemen, Nanna Rita, my father and my daughters.
It continues through every family member who chooses to stand in the light rather than hide.
Lulu was a child.
She was an Anaiwan woman.
She was a mother, an ancestor and part of a family that survived.
The system may have locked away her childhood, but it did not imprison her legacy.
You can lock a body and turn a key, but you cannot cage the spirit.
Lulu is hidden no more.
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