When it comes to the question of who was the first Aboriginal to play cricket for Australia the answer is often carefully phrased. Many will say the first known Aboriginal to play for Australia was Jason Gillespie. The reason being that there is a feeling that there may have been players who played for Australia of Aboriginal descent who did not reveal their heritage for fear it would work against them, as it had for many players in the past.
Even if Jason Gillespie is given as the answer it is in fact wrong. The first Aboriginal to play for Australia was Faith Thomas (nee Coulthard).
Faith was born on the 22 February 1933 at Nepabunna, South Australia. Her mother was an Adnyamathanha woman and her father Polish. Her original name was Tinnipha.
Faith was unfortunate to be one of the “stolen generation.” A generation of Indigenous children that were taken away from their families and raised in white foster homes and missions so as to better prepare them for life in white Australia. In their late teens these children were given two choices, they could stay on in the racist cities or go back to their Indigenous communities with whom they had unfortunately lost all connection.Either way life was tough.
Faith was taken away from her home on the Flinders Ranges at three months old and taken to Colebrook Home in Quorn, about 40km north-east of Port Augusta.
In an interview with Cricket Monthly in 2019 she said she was happy at the home and that two English matrons spoiled her. To keep herself occupied she would throw rocks at the galahs, claiming that “You had to throw that far in front, so they could fly into it.”
An opportunity to study Nursing at the Royal Adelaide Hospital came her way and she grabbed it. It was here that she became involved in both hockey and cricket.
Like many before her she learned the hard way, telling Cricket Monthly “I remember getting hit by a cricket ball once. Crying me eyes out. That’s when I thought you have got to bat to protect yourself. So that was it.”
Although it was not as a batsman that she made her name. She became one of the fastest female bowlers in the area. At one time she took six wickets for no runs against Adelaide Teacher’s College.
In Brisbane in 1958 in a warm up match she bowled the England captain Mary Duggan and claimed the wicket-keeper caught the bail while the middle stump flew over the top of their head. She was selected for the Test match a few days later.
Faith was also selected for tours to England and New Zealand but opted not to go. The idea of five weeks on a boat was too much for her. After all as she said she was a desert person.
This was a remarkable feat. Not only was Faith a woman playing what was deemed at the time a ‘men’s game,’ but she was Aboriginal. The Aboriginal people would not be given the right to vote across the whole of Australia until seven year after she made her International debut in 1965. Aboriginal people were not part of the Census until 1967. Their battle to be recognised within the Constitution of Australia, continues. The Constitution was drafted at a time when Australia was considered a land that belonged to no one before European settlement. It was accepted and adopted in 1901 a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were considered a ‘dying race’ not worthy of citizenship or humanity. The Australian Human Rights Commission sums this up best when it says “In addition to its legal function, the Australian Constitution has a symbolic value as the ‘birth certificate’ of this nation and our identity as Australians.”
So Faith had to overcome remarkable odds to represent her country. It is a credit to not only the South Australian Cricket Association who selected her, but also the Australian Women’s Crickey Council who ran the game at the time for picking talent over everything else.
In that interview last year Faith revealed that like many cricketers before her the great lunches stood out in her memories. Those and the long train journeys, as well as the “mates” from cricket, and of course the men who just to pooh-poohed women’s cricket.
She married her husband, Bernard Thomas, the son of a conductor in an orchestra.who she made follow her down to her home town to get her to commit to marriage.
She continued nursing in the bush and never forgot the impact those British matrons had on her life. She made a point of looking after them in their old age. When one of them wanted to return to the United Kingdom she helped raise money to take her back to London. She also raised the money for her to return when she decided she wished to come back to Australia.
She has been called a trailblazer not just with her nursing but also her sporting success becoming the first Aboriginal male or female to represent Australia in any sport. In her life she rubbed shoulders with men of influence including Sir Doug Nicholls the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted in 1972. A man who to date is the first and only Aboriginal to be appointed to a Vice-Regal office when he was made Governor of South Australia.
Despite a hectic life she founded the Aboriginal Sports Hall of Fame Federation.
Faith Thomas may have only played the one Test match but she has lived a life that is full and taken every opportunity that has come her way. In that Test Match against England she scored 3 runs and bowled six overs for only 11 runs and failed to take a wicket.
In June 2019 her achievement was acknowledged with the Order of Australia. In 2018 she and Jason Gillespie had two new trophies named in their honour. Trophies that are awarded to the winners of Adelaide Strikers’ BBL and WBBL games against the Perth Scorchers wherever the game is played. She is still alive living in an old people’s home in Port Augusta, and will turn 88 in February.
This remarkable lady should be far better known than she is.
