Pat Eatock (1937–2015)

Pat Eatock was an advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians, women, and workers. She once wrote of her 'refusal to restrict [her] comments to Aboriginal issues alone', asserting that she would not 'be silent on any issue where I felt that there was a fundamental injustice'.¹

Eatock was born in Redcliffe, Queensland, to Scottish immigrant mother Elizabeth and father Roderick, of Aboriginal and English ancestry. After a disrupted education, she left school at 14 and became a factory worker. Moving to Sydney, she married Ron Eatock, in 1957 and they had six children.

In the early 1970s Pat Eatock became involved in activism and the lands rights movement, attending conferences in Sydney and Alice Springs. Moving to Canberra in 1972 with her youngest child, she joined the recently-established Aboriginal Tent Embassy, becoming part of its leadership group. Eatock was active in Canberra Women's Liberation, Women Against Rape, and the National Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women. In 1972 she became the first Indigenous woman in the ACT to stand for federal parliament, campaigning on a platform of 'Aboriginal, women's, workers' and children's rights'.

The following year Eatock became the first non-matriculated mature-aged student to study at the Australian National University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977. In 1975 she attended the International Women's Year World Conference in Mexico City. Her subsequent public service career included roles in the Department of Social Security's Aboriginal Unit, and the NSW Department of TAFE. Between 1991 and 1992 she lectured in community development at Curtin University.

From 1992 to 1996, Eatock established and ran Perleeka Aboriginal Television, training Indigenous film-makers and producing programs for community television. In 2011 she was the lead plaintiff in a successful Federal Court of Australia action, claiming that journalist Andrew Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles published in 2009.²

Eatock died in Sydney in 2015.

References
1. Pat Eatock, 'A small but stinging twig; reflections of a black campaigner', in Henry Mayer, ed., Labor to power, Angus and Roberston, Sydney, 1973, 152–54. Information for this biography is also taken from: Ann-Mari Jordens, 'Eatock, Pat', The Australian Women's Register; 'June Patricia "Pat" Eatock', Blak History, 2023; Michelle Arrow, The Seventies: the personal, the political and the making of modern Australia, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2019; Pat and Cathy Eatock, 'The personal is political', in M Arrow, ed., Women and Whitlam: revisiting the revolution, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2023. Websites accessed 27 June 2024.
2. Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103, accessed 27 June 2024.