Roy Henry Patterson

Roy Henry Patterson (1940–2017) was a Taungurung Elder with Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Irish heritage. Born and raised in Healesville, Roy worked in the forestry industry, as a circus hand and as a farm labourer. In retirement, he returned to his ancestral lands at Taggerty, in central Victoria’s Upper Goulburn Valley. Drawn by desire to protect and foster respect for his traditional Country, Uncle Roy worked (2002–17) as an Indigenous Educator at the Camp Jungai outdoor education facility and at Holmesglen Rural Learning Centre at Eildon, where he became renowned for applying traditional knowledge to his cooking and in medicinal interventions. Uncle Roy died on 15 April 2017, and is survived by children Keith, Steven, Jessica and their families.

On Taungurung Land »

Sharing History and Culture

Authored by: Roy Henry Patterson, Jennifer Jones

Publication date: December 2020

On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture is the first monograph to examine how the Taungurung Nation of central Victoria negotiated with protectors and pastoralists to retain possession of their own country for as long as possible. Historic accounts, to date, have treated the histories of Acheron and Mohican Aboriginal stations as preliminary to the establishment of the more famous Coranderrk on Wurundjeri land. Instead of ‘rushing down the hill’ to Coranderrk, this book concentrates upon the two foundational Aboriginal stations on Taungurung Country. A collaboration between Elder Uncle Roy Patterson and Jennifer Jones, the book draws upon Taungurung oral knowledge and an unusually rich historical record. This fine-grained local history and cultural memoir shows that adaptation to white settlement and the preservation of culture were not mutually exclusive. Uncle Roy shares generational knowledge in this book in order to revitalise relationships to place and establish respect and mutual practices of care for Country.

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