What did mokare do

Mokare other spellings are Mokkare, Mawcarrie, Markew, Makkare and Maukorra is described as a Minang Noongar, who was a young man in his twenties when he met the British explorers at King George Sound in the mid s [1]. This is where the first port, named Albany, in what was to become the Western Australian Colony, was established.

Minang Mineng is one of sixteen such names shown on the map and comprising the Noongar area lying on the southwest side of a line drawn from about Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the south coast. The location of Albany was formerly known as Kin-gil-yilling. Mokare is known to have had 2 brothers, Mollian d. He may also have had a sister named Mullet [5].

History of noongar people

In , he was described as "a key person for the success of early white-Aboriginal relations in Albany" [6]. He was able to make friends with a visiting French scientific expedition, recorded by d'Urbville's. In "he showed Europeans the walking trails that the Noongar people had used and maintained over generations in the Albany region. From , Mokkare "became friends, sharing the house and food, with the assistant surgeon, Isaac Scott-Nind, in Albany"; followed by being a companion, guide and advisor to successive commandants, including Captain Collet Barker [7] , whom he stayed with; and an especially good friend to settler and Colonial Surgeon, Dr Alexander Collie, who lived for 18 months in Albany from having been appointed a Justice of the Peace and the first Government Resident for King George Sound [8].

However this same reference points to the naming of a site after Mokare, Mokare Park, consisting of native bushland on the northern side of Mount Melville in Albany, which notes that he was one of the best known of the Noongars, who fell ill with influenza in June and died 9 August in Dr Collie's living room [9]. Furthermore, it gives his age at death as , for a birth year range of about to He was certainly very mature and largely responsible for the peaceful way events unfolded from the arrival of the first settlers in the Albany area, and the many relationships he had with influential 'whitefellas'.

He would have been greatly dissappointed at the appalling treatment of the First Peoples of what is now known as Western Australia from the 's onwards, and even earlier to his Noongar people in the Swan River Colony in the early 's, to Yagan-2 , his father and others. He was truly a Man of Peace. For further detail on the relationship between Mokare, other leading Indigenous people and the early non-indigenous arrivals see Mokare's Mob [10] , which provides a link to Coolbun, who lived in the King George Sound Albany district in , and is considered to be the ancestor of the Colbung family Tilbrook, , p.