Professor Murray Phillips from UQ’s School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences discussed the Cherbourg Marching Girls with the ABC.
Aboriginal sporting history has been brought to life in a new book that details how a group of women from a south-east Queensland mission nearly won a national title in the most popular female sport of the era.
Aunty Lesley, her sister Sandra Morgan and a Cherbourg committee, have worked alongside co-authors Professor Murray Phillips and Dr Gary Osmond from The University of Queensland to document the history in a book entitled, Marching With A Mission: Cherbourg's Marching Girls.
Professor Phillips studied sport history and said she was researching in Cherbourg when the idea was born.
"We had just finished the day and [were] walking to the car when one of the female elders said, 'When are you going to tell our story?' "And we swung around and said, 'What story is that?,' and they said, 'The marching girls', and that's how it started.
