Dennis Foley - An Indigenous Gai-mariagal man. Really? - Part 1 — Dark Emu Exposed

Sep 15

Sep 15 Dennis Foley - An Indigenous Gai-mariagal man. Really? - Part 1

Dennis Foley, Fakes, Just Making Stuff Up

When we started the Deep Fake Project we were inundated with information from our readers about potentially ‘fake’ Indigenous academics who had infiltrated our institutions.

These alleged ‘fakes’ were people who claimed to be of Aboriginal descent so as to qualify for the special ‘identified positions’ in academia. These positions are meant to be reserved for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people who genuinely satisfy the ‘3 part rule’ of Aboriginality.

Most of our informants were Aboriginal people who knew their families, their kin and their family trees thoroughly and they could ‘spot a fake a mile off.’

As our project continued, one name kept cropping up amongst our Aboriginal informants, that of Dennis Foley, Professor of Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Professor at the Canberra Business School, University of Canberra.

Our Aboriginal informants allege that Dennis Foley has no Aboriginal ancestry. They provided us with a well researched family tree of Dennis Foley, which seemed to confirm that Foley indeed had no obvious Aboriginal ancestors. Instead, all his familial roots appear to go back to Ireland, England and Germany.

The evidence seemed to suggest that the ancestry of Dennis Foley is like the majority of us in Australia, solely that of the immigrant and convict. We could find no evidence of ‘Aboriginal’ ancestry or descent in his family tree.

This post investigates Dennis Foley’s claim that his matrilineal ancestry is Gai-mariagal, one of the Aboriginal clans from the Sydney region.

We will detail his alleged lack of patrilineal, Wiradjuri Aboriginal ancestry in another post soon.

**Professor Dennis Foley in ‘Western civvies’ -** ***Source***

**Professor Dennis Foley in full Aboriginal ‘face-paint.’ -** ***Source***

As part of the Deep Fake Project, we undertook our own advanced genealogical research and attempted to corroborate our findings against a ‘primary source’, Dennis Foley’s own book, What the Colonists Never Knew. This book was co-authored with historian Peter Read and was published by the National Museum Australia. Foley leads the reader to believe that this book is heavily ‘auto-biographical’ in nature, but our findings suggest that the book contains many inconsistencies about the life of Dennis Foley and his ancestors.

The book received solid reviews from two noteworthy academics - ‘Indigenous’ Professor Bruce Pascoe from Melbourne University (who also wrote the book’s Foreword) and the very heavily scientifically credentialed Professor Heather Goodall of the University of Technology Sydney.

‘This is a mesmerising read. It flows from rich anecdotal remembrance loaded with song and lore to incisive commentary about legislation and then slips seamlessly into detailed evocation of pre-colonial life. I have always loved Foley’s ability to bring a story to life and Read’s measured but uncompromising analysis … I love this bloody book’.

— Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture.

‘Come into this book to find a Sydney that many of us have never seen… Dennis and Peter are both master storytellers…’.

— Professor Heather Goodall, FRSN, FASSA is an Australian academic and historian. She is Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research and writing focuses on Indigenous and environmental history and intercolonial networks. Goodall graduated from the University of Sydney in 1975 and was awarded the University Medal in History. She received a PhD from the same university in 1982. Goodall won the inaugural Australian History Prize at the New South Wales Premier's History Awards in 1997 and a Rona Tranby Award in 1998. She won the Magarey Medal for biography in 2005. Goodall was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2007. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. (Wikipedia)

Readers of the Dark Emu Exposed website might not be surprised that a writer of Pascoe’s calibre would wholeheartedly endorse Foley and Read’s book. However, the support of an academic of Goodall’s apparent qualifications is more surprising.

Dennis Foley’s Alleged Family Tree

The alleged family tree of Professor Dennis Foley, that we were able to construct from the public records, is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Alleged Family Tree of Professor Dennis Foley who claims *‘his matrilineal links are with the Gai-mariagal people of north-eastern Sydney, and his patrilineal connections are with the Wiradjuri of the Turon River region in western New South Wales.’* Our independent genealogical research has been unable to confirm these claims by Professor Foley. There appear to be no Aboriginal ancestors in Professor Foley’s family (***Full file here***)

As Figure 1 shows, our research was unable to identify any Aboriginal people amongst Professor Dennis Foley’s ancestors. All his ancestors could be traced directly back to immigrants or convicts who had been born in Ireland, England or Germany.

His ‘matrilineal links’ appear to be with Ireland and England and not with the Gai-mariagal people of north-eastern Sydney.

His ‘patrilineal connections’ appear to be with Germany, Ireland and England and not with the Wiradjuri of the Turon Rover region in western New South Wales.

This evidence supports our Aboriginal informants that they were indeed correct in their belief that Foley is not of Aboriginal descent.

Additionally, our Aboriginal informants were not the first to have made this claim. Foley himself has included in his own book a number of instances where his Aboriginality has been challenged. He claims that these challenges have been ‘the driving force for me to write my family’s stories.’ (Figures 2 to 4, and see Note 1 for more detail).

Figure 2 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p45. *See also Note 1 in Further Reading below*

**Figure 3 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p4**

**Figure 4 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p5**

However, Dennis Foley is adamant that he is Aboriginal - “always was and always will be Gai-mariagal!”

Was Dennis Foley one of the so-called ‘Stolen Generations’?

Dennis Foley also describes in Figure 3 above how he was, ‘stolen, placed in gaol (Minda Remand Centre) and fostered out like a dog’ in his ‘teenage years’. With these claims Dennis Foley appears to be attempting to make the reader think that he was one of the ‘Stolen Generations.’

But is this true?

Chapter 5 of Foley and Read’s book is entitled, ‘The Stolen Generations of Sydney.’ On page 163, Dennis Foley describes what happened when he was 10 (in 1963 given that Foley was born in 1953):

**Figure 5 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p163**

**Figure 6 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p164**

**Figure 7 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p165**

Life for the 10-year old Dennis Foley in the Minda Remand Centre, at the hands of the other inmates - the 16, 17 and 18 year old predators - sounds very harrowing.

**Figure 8 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p165.**

**Figure 9 - *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p166.**

But is this all true?

Were Dennis Foley’s parents in such dire financial straits that Dennis was ‘arrested’ and incarcerated in Minda Remand Centre in 1963 when he was 10? Was Dennis ‘stolen’ because he was a neglected part-Aboriginal child?

In our opinion, we think that Dennis Foley is ‘just making this all up.’

Firstly, Dennis Foley could not have been ‘arrested’ at the age of 10 and put in Minda Remand Centre in 1963 because Minda did not open as a Remand Centre until three years later, on 6 May 1966.

**Figure 10 - Minda Remand Centre** ***Source***.

Secondly, we have found an interview where Dennis Foley admits to having been to Children’s Court for what he claims was ‘accidentally’ being caught in a stolen car,

‘I remember one time I was accidentally caught in a stolen car of joyriding. I didn't know it was stolen, but anyway off we all go to Children's Court. Three of my teachers turned up [to Court]. My mum and dad were too frightened to go there and plus dad had to work, no dad was in hospital, dad had cancer, he was in hospital. Mum had no way of getting to Children's Court. Three of my teachers rolled up the children's court but there was an agenda [to provide good character references get us off as ‘they [my teachers] wanted sport and and we provided it’]

- Listen to interview here from 53:50

In our opinion we believe Dennis Foley is conflating these two periods of his life - when he was a 10 year old living at home with his mum and dad in 1963, and when he was a wayward teenager sometime after 1966 when Minda had opened and he would have been say, 16 or 17 years old (Note 2 below for Dennis’s other version of events).

Minda operated as a ‘shelter and remand centre for children appearing before the children’s court’ (as above). In Dennis Foley’s own words, he was implicated in the theft of a car as a teenager and he appeared in Children’s Court. Thus, we suggest that he was probably remanded at Minda as a 16 year old for car theft while his hearing in court proceeded.

Dennis Foley has provided no documentary evidence that he was actually ‘stolen’ or taken from his parents at the age of 10 by the police because he was a neglected Aboriginal child.

Did Dennis Foley Come from a Disadvantaged Poor Aboriginal Family?

Dennis Foley claims that his parents, Gordon and Beatrice (nee Lougher) Foley were both of Aboriginal descent. Dennis Foley claims his father is a Wiradjuri Aboriginal man and his mother is a Gai-mariagal Aboriginal woman.

Both of Dennis Foley’s parents were born in NSW in 1921. They married in 1941 with an elegant wedding ceremony and function which was typical of many aspirational working class and middle-class Australian couples of the time.

Figure 11 - Marriage of Gordon Foley to Beatrice Lougher. *Source : Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 06 Jun 2013*

1941 WEDDING BELLS : FOLEY—LOUGHER.

The Methodist Church, Manly, was chosen for the wedding of Miss Beatrice Lougher, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. G. Lougher, of Harbord, to Mr. Gordon J. Foley, third son of Mr. and Mrs. Foley, of Glebe Point. The bride looked charming as she entered the church on her father's arm, preceded by her two small cousins, Joan and Margaret Healey, who acted as flower girls. They were dressed alike in romance blue water wave taffetta Kate Greenaway frocks, with pink velvet bows down the front. They carried Old World posies, with gold lockets and chains, the gifts of the bridegroom.

The bride's frock was of special bridal satin-backed water wave taffetta, cut on classical lines with long train. Her tulle veil, kindly lent by her cousin (Mrs. McCormack) fell from a top-knot of hyacinth, stocks and sweet-peas, and she carried a shower bouquet of lilies, hyacinths, stocks, carnations, and sweets peas, with diamond dress clips, which were the bridegroom's gifts. The bride's gift to the bridegroom was a fitted dressing case.

The two bridesmaids, Miss Jean Hunt and Miss Mary Murphy, were dressed alike in romance blue water waved taffetta, with top-knots of flowers and blue tulle veils. Their bouquets were of carnations, sweet peas, stocks and hyacinths, with gold lockets and chains, gifts of the bridegroom. The bridegroom was attended by his two elder brothers. Mr. Jack Foley acted as best man and Leo Foley as groomsman. Miss Robertson sang 'I Will Wait Beside You Through the Coming Years.'

Mr. and Mrs. G. Lougher received about 50 guests at the Masonic Hall, where everyone had an enjoyable time with music and dancing. The bride's travelling frock, coat and hat were of beige, with brown accessories. Mr. Charles McCormack acted as M.C. The happy couple left for a two weeks' honeymoon at Coolangatta, Queensland. Their future home will be at Glebe Point. The bride's brother's wife, and baby travelled over 500 miles, from Griffith, to be present.

- The Cessnock Eagle and South Maitland Recorder, 5 September 1941, p2

Initially, they were living as a newly wed couple in the same suburb, Harbord, as Dennis Foley’s grandmother Clarice (‘the last practicing matriarch of the clan group known as Gai-mariagal’ as Dennis tells us in his book (ibid., p8)).

As the electoral records show, Dennis’s father Gordon was a toolmaker, then a draughtsman and then finally an engineer, and his mother was a house-wife.

1943 Residence from NSW Electoral Rolls

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 83 Wyuna Avenue, Harbord, toolmaker

Foley, Beatrice, 83 Wyuna Avenue, Harbord, home duties

1949 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 94 Wyadra Avenue, Harbord, toolmaker

Foley, Beatrice, 94 Wyadra Avenue, Harbord, home duties

1954 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 1 Kawana Avenue, Bass Hill, toolmaker

Foley, Beatrice, 1 Kawana avenue, home duties

1958 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, draughtsman

Foley, Beatrice, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, home duties

1963 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, draughtsman

Foley, Beatrice, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, home duties

1968 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, draughtsman

Foley, Beatrice, 10 Kenward Avenue, Chester Hill, home duties

1972 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, engineer

Foley, Beatrice, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, home duties

1977 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, engineer

Foley, Beatrice, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, home duties

1980 Residence

Foley, Gordon Joseph, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, engineer

Foley, Beatrice, 38 Beale Crescent, Fairfield, home duties

A number of family photographs exist showing Dennis and his family leading typical aspirational working-class/middle-class lives in the Sydney of the 1940s to 1970s. These photographs we have obtained from Dennis Foley’s book and from other family members who have posted them online in family history websites. They provide no hint whatsoever that Dennis Foley came from a poor, disadvantaged Aboriginal family.

**Figure 12A - Dennis’s parents Gordon and Beatrice Foley 1946.**
**Figure 12B - Dennis’s mother Beatrice Lougher aged about 19 years. (*ibid.*, p61)**

**Figure 13 - Dennis and his mother ca1959. His mother is at the driving wheel of the what looks like the family car.**

As we explored the family history and photographs of Dennis Foley’s parents, we began to wonder just how accurate his biographical contribution to the book What the Colonists Never Knew, really was. Further inconsistencies in his ‘stories’ began to appear.

For example, Dennis Foley makes the following claim about his mother Beatrice,

‘Mum was very dark when she was young…Mum was born in about 1923[sic]…she was always keen to come out from Curl Curl to visit the camp at Narrabeen; it was like the only time she allowed herself to be Aboriginal.’ (ibid., p58)

In the photograph above Beatrice Lougher does not look ‘very dark’ at the age of 19.

Additionally, she was actually born in 1921, not 1923 as Dennis claims. From her 1941 Marriage Certificate her age is listed as 20 and on her mother’s Death Certificate of 1965 her age is listed as 44. Both these certificates are evidence that she was born in 1921. The NSW Births Deaths & Marriages website confirms her birth year as 1921 and several family trees on Ancestry.com suggest her actual birthdate was 17 July 1921.

Does this mean that her own son Dennis does not know accurately when his mother was born? Or is he being vague on the details of her life for another reason? Only Dennis Foley himself can answer this question.

We undertook similar research into the ancestry of Dennis’s father, Gordon Foley. We could find no evidence or even amention anywhere to support Dennis Foley’s claim that his father was a Wiradjuri Aboriginal man (ibid., inside back-cover).

We did locate two photographs of Dennis Foley’s father, Gordon Foley, during his war service years. There was no mention anywhere in his service files that Gordon Foley was Aboriginal.

Figure 14 - Gordon Foley about 1941. Place Unknown (possibly Puckapunyal in Victoria). In Military Winter Uniform for Special Forces. *Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 06 Jun 2013*

Film Clip of the trade of toolmaking - essential during the war effort

Figure 15 - Gordon Foley in 1943 in summer uniform of Royal Australian Engineers. Gordon at this stage is married to Beatrice Lougher and serving in or near Brisbane in Queensland. Gordon laid mustard gas for the perceived impending Japanese invasion and was used in laying charges to destroy major infrastructure items such as railways and bridges should the invasion occur. *Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 07 Feb 2015*

Figure 16 - Gordon and Beatrice Foley (nee Lougher) *Source - Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 05 Jun 2013*

Figure 16 shows Dennis’s parents in later life. Fortunately Dennis’s dad survived the cancer that Dennis says he was hospitalised for in 1963 when Dennis was 10 and being ‘stolen’ by the police because mum couldn’t pay the rent (ibid., p163).

He also survived a second bout of cancer which Dennis Foley tells us he was hospitalised for in about 1966-68 when Dennis was appearing in Children’s court (Listen to interview here from 53:50).

Or was it one long tragic hospitalization for cancer from 1963 to about 1968? Dennis Foley doesn’t tell us - nor does he tell us how his father Gordon managed to progress his career from draughtsman to finally engineer by 1972, as indicated in Gordon’s electoral roll occupations, despite his severe health crisis.

Gordon Foley passed away in 1984 at the age of 63.

Dennis Foley makes two statements to suggest to the reader that he had an upbringing as a disadvantaged Aboriginal child from a poor family.

Firstly, he tells us during a discussion recorded on Youtube that,

‘the book [What the Colonists Never Knew],…really it's a story of me growing up as a small child and our family was not unlike a lot of Aboriginal families in Sydney in the 50s - I was guarded very closely by my grandmother; and my grandmother lived at Harbord and I used to live with her most of the time and I'd go back and visit my parents who lived in the the housing commission built in the western suburbs. Mum and Dad went from places like Bass Hill …Chester Hill and they lived in these horrible fibro microwaves [?], fibro internal walls, fibro external walls. Anyway Mum and Dad they did it pretty tough so I used to live with grandma and, you know, the concept of poverty wasn't a thing that you really knew about because most of the people around you are in the same way… we used to eat a lot of Warrigal greens which is the Aboriginal spinach…’

- Dennis Foley speaking here at 04:13-05:24

The elegant wedding photograph of Dennis’s parents in 1941 coupled with the glowing wedding notice above hardly suggests that Dennis parents were a struggling Aboriginal family. And sure, their $872,000 home at 10 Kenward Ave Chester Hill might not be so salubrious to Dennis today, but in the 1950’s it wasn’t that bad and was typical for a young, married, aspirational working class family.

Secondly, Dennis Foley includes two photographs of himself at age 10 in his school sports uniform, shortly before he says he was taken into the care of the Child Protection Agency (or Minda Remand Centre as Foley claims) (Figure 17).

He appears to be immaculately well presented and cared for, so it is pretty inconceivable that he would have been classed as a child needing state care. To support his case, Foley really should have included in his book a copy of what he described as the ‘document of his arrest’, or something similar, to allay the skeptical thoughts of his readers.

**Figure 17 - Source : *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p164**

Dennis Foley claims that his grandmother was ‘Clarice Malinda Lougher, the last practicing matriarch of the clan group known as Gai-mariagal” (ibid., p8).

But was she really a financially struggling Aboriginal woman?

Presumably in 1941, when it was the custom for the parents of the bride to pay for the wedding, Clarice and her husband Garfield Lougher, as the bride’s parents, would have footed the wedding bill. We also know that Clarice and Garfield had built their own home - Figure 18 is said to be a photograph of the Harbord home they built. So as a couple they must have been relatively financially well-off.

**Figure 18 - Photograph of 94 Wyadra Ave, Harbord, NSW.**
**‘Garfield and Clarice Lougher built their own home at No. 94. Garfield's brother Edmund Lougher and his wife Naomi (nee Rees) built their own home at No. 98’ -** *Source : Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 17 Jun 2016*

In our research we were unable to find any evidence that Dennis Foley’s grandmother, Clarice Malinda Lougher (nee Morris), was Aboriginal by descent. All her ancestry went back to England and Ireland (See Figure 1 for the family tree).

We have found no other family member in any of the on-line ancestry websites, or any other researcher, who has claimed that Clarice Lougher was Aboriginal. The only person claiming that she was an ‘Aboriginal matriarch’ appears to be Dennis Foley. Some of the other images of Clarice Lougher that other family members and researchers have made available are shown in Figures 19 to 21.

Figure 19 - ca1940s Photograph of Clarice Malinda Lougher nee Morris. *Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 05 Jun 2013*

Figure 20 - ca1945 Photograph of Clarice Lougher and her son, Garfield Lougher at Harbord, NSW. *Source: jeb1313 originally shared this on 02 Jun 2013*

Figure 21 - ca1958 Photograph at 10 Kenward Ave, Chester Hill North, NSW of Clarice Lougher in the backyard of daughter, Beatrice and son-in-law Gordon Foley's home. *Source: jeb1313 originally shared this on 05 Jun 2013*

The Fictional ‘Sydney Aboriginal’ Woman, Ngu Ngu

Dennis Foley tells us in What the Colonists Never Knew that,

‘It seems like in about 1850, my great-great Aboriginal grandmother left Sydney and went to Molong, but we don’t know exactly who she went with and why.

Apparently in Molong she was known as Noo Noo, which must relate to the name given to one or two of the properties up there. Spelled the Aboriginal way it would be Ngu Ngu or Gnoo Gnoo, rhyming with ‘canoe.’ Anyway these ancestors spent the next 60 years coming back again through the Hunter Valley coal towns like Cessnock and Morpeth.

In Nanna Lougher’s [Clarice’s] case, it was back from Cessnock when she was about 30 years of age. This must have been in the 1930s…Back in her country, Grandma Lougher obviously was recognised for the long lost relative she was, which must have been such a joy for all her extended family still living hidden away around the Manly Lagoon. This is where her traditional education in her own country really began. She got her re-education in the swamps of Harbord…always down there catching ducks and swan eggs or eels or gathering wild flowers.’ - (ibid., p60).

Figure 21 - Modern day Aboriginal women collecting swamp foods in northern Australia. *Source: off the internet*

Figure 19repeat - ca1940s Photograph of Clarice Malinda Lougher nee Morris. *Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 05 Jun 2013*

Co-author Peter Read lends his support to this fantasy of Foley’s that his grandmother (left) was down in the swamps of Harbord hunting and gathering food for the family like real Aboriginal women in northern Australia still do today (far left).

Read writes, ‘the decades during which Dennis’s Gai-mariagal family was far away in Molong had begun with a sense of Sydney Aboriginal solidarity: self confident and self-identifying families making their way in the world of the colonists. It ended by 1900 in the collapse of enterprises, loss of country and family dispersals…’ (ibid., p84).

The evidence we have located paints a very different picture of the life of Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother, his Ngu Ngu of the ‘Gai-mariagal clan’.

In Reid and Foley’s book, Dennis Foley provides one photograph of a woman who he says is his great-great-grandmother, Flora Garlick. He claims that she was the Aboriginal woman in Molong known as Ngu Ngu (Figure 22).

She appears as a dark skinned (or is it just a dark photograph?), frail old woman with her walking stick (or is that an Aboriginal woman’s digging stick?) sitting alongside her daughter, who was Dennis Foley’s great-grandmother Emily Susan Morris (nee Garlick).

While Dennis Foley might want to call his Aboriginal great-great-grandmother Ngu Ngu, without providing a shred of evidence that she did go by this name, we have found that her family members knew her only by her legal name of Florence (Flora) Charlotte Garlick (nee McNeilly).

Our Figure 23 is an un-cropped photograph of the one Dennis Foley included in his book (Figure 22). It shows 5-generations of the Morris-branch of Dennis Foley’s family tree. If Dennis Foley is correct in his claim that Flora Garlick was the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu, then all these Morris descendants would also be of Aboriginal descent. We found no evidence in the online family trees of the Morris’s that any of these Morris family members were claiming Aboriginal ancestry from Flora Garlick.

**Figure 22 - Dennis Foley claims his great-great-grandmother, Flora Garlick, was an Aboriginal woman who went from Sydney to Molong where she was known as Ngu Ngu.** **Source : *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p61**

**Figure 23- The full unedited photograph of the one in Figure 22 that was included in Dennis Foley’s book.**
*Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 10 Aug 2016 (Photograph provided by descendant of Flora Garlick, Robin Corban)*

**Figure 24 - 1939 Photo of Garlick Family, Sydney**
***Back:*** L-R - **Emily Susan Morris (nee Garlick)**; her son Stanley Adolphus Morris, Gertrude Ann Garlick; and Stanley's wife Emily Ethel.
***Front:*** Violet Valerie Garlick, **Flora Charlotte Garlick**; and Bertha Adelia Garlick.
Names revised at family reunion in Sydney 2016. **Photograph supplied by Beatrice Lougher (nee Morris).** *Source: Ancestry user jeb1313 originally shared this on 06 Jun 2013*

So what Dennis Foley would have us believe is that the Florence (Flora) Charlotte Garlick (nee McNeilly) - his Ngu Ngu - in these photographs, and her daughter Emily Susan Morris (nee Garlick) - Dennis’s Aboriginal great-grandmother - are ‘off-Country’ in Molong and, as co-author Peter Reid tells us, by 1900 their world had collapsed.

Dennis Foley then wants us to believe that by 1930 his grandmother ‘Nanna Lougher’ - Clarice Malinda Lougher nee Morris - had returned to be ‘on Country’ back in Sydney, re-learning and carrying on the Aboriginal customs, traditions and lore of her grandmother, Ngu Ngu.

What a lot of rubbish Dennis Foley is trying to foist onto his readers - and what a disrespectful fantasy this tale is to the real Aboriginal people from Sydney.

Come on Dennis you are just ‘pulling our leg.’

The Real Florence (Flora) Charlotte Garlick - Dennis’s Great Great Grandmother

It does seem strange that both the authors, Professor Dennis Foley and historian Peter Reid, were at a loss for details on Dennis’s ancestor when they wrote,

‘It seems like in about 1850, my great-great Aboriginal grandmother left Sydney and went to Molong, but we don’t know exactly who she went with and why. Apparently in Molong she was known as Noo Noo, which must relate to the name given to one or two of the properties up there. Spelled the Aboriginal way it would be Ngu Ngu or Gnoo Gnoo, rhyming with ‘canoe.’ Anyway these ancestors spent the next 60 years coming back again through the Hunter Valley coal towns like Cessnock and Morpeth’. (ibid., p60,p84)

With a little digging, us amateurs here at Dark Emu Exposed were able to find the following evidence to show that Dennis Foley, once again is ‘just making stuff up’ about his great-great-grandmother, Flora Garlick.

A quick check of the publically available genealogy records enabled us to confirm the following family tree for Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother, Florence (Flora) Charlotte Garlick (nee McNeilly). She is not of Aboriginal descent but rather all her family originally came from England or Ireland.

**Figure 25 - Family tree excerpt for Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother Flora Garlick (nee McNeilly) who he claims was an Aboriginal woman known as Ngu Ngu.**

In 1940 two obituaries were published for great-great-grandmother Flora Garlick, which shed light on who she really was.

**Figure 26 - Obituary for Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother who he claims was the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu.** *Source: The* *Molong Express, 7 December 1940, p. 12*

**Figure 27 - A second Obituary for Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother who he claims was the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu.** *Source:* *The Northern Champion (Taree), 30 November 1940, p. 4*

These obituaries lead us onto her husband George Garlick, the blacksmith of Molong. From a family member’s on-line family history we were able to recover the following family portrait of the George and Flora Garlick’s large family (Figure 28).

Figure 28 - ca1900 Garlick family portrait. Dennis Foley claims that Flora Garlick (back row second from left) who is his great great grandmother Flora Garlick was actually an Aboriginal woman going by the name of Ngu Ngu.
Supplied by Hubert Ernest George Garlick's granddaughter Robin Corbin (nee Webber) *Source: Ancestry user CressidaToorenburg originally shared this on 27 Jun 2016*

ca1900 Photograph - A Garlick Family Portrait

A family reunion in about 1900 in Molong, NSW.

Rear L-R: Bill Bruck (Aunty Bert's husband), Flora Garlick; Hubert Ernest George Garlick (1881-1968); Mabel (wife of Uncle Bill Garlick); Uncle Bill Garlick.

Middle Row: L-R: Aunty Bert, George Garlick, (Flora’s husband) Hubert's wife Eva May Moss (1881-1955)

Bottom Row of children L-R: Uncle Ern (3rd child of Hubert and Eva Garlick), Mabel and Bill's 3 children: Uncle George (2nd child) and his eldest brother Warren.

Our readers might now be wondering whether Dennis Foley’s claim that the woman standing in the back row, second from left is in fact Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu. Readers might also be wondering whether Peter Reid is correct to claim that 'Dennis’s Gai-mariagal family was far away in Molong’ and ‘by 1900 [their world suffered from a]…collapse of enterprises, loss of country and family dispersals…’ (ibid., p84).

This family portrait of George and Flora Garlick from the 1900 reunion does not seem to support these claims by Dennis Foley and Peter Reid - Flora does not look Aboriginal and her family looks prosperous and far from collapse.

We have located the following additional photographs of Flora Garlick, Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother, who he calls by the Aboriginal name Ngu Ngu.

Figure 29 - Said to be a photograph of Flora Charlotte McNeilly (unknown date). *Source: Ancestry.com user Robin Webber originally shared this on 23 May 2022*

Figure 30 - Said to be a photograph of Flora Charlotte McNeilly (unknown date). *Source: Ancestry.com user Steenbergen8 originally shared this on 20 Jun 2017*

**Figure 31 - Flora Garlick (nee McNeilly) - a cropped image from the photograph above in Figure 28**

**Figure 32 - A cropped image of the photograph presented as ”Dennis’s great-great-grandmother Flora Garlick” as quoted by Dennis Foley in his book** *What the Colonists Never Knew*, p61

To us it appears that, of all the photographs available of his great-great-grandmother Flora Garlick, Dennis Foley has selected the one for inclusion in his book which portrays Flora as ‘dark’. Dennis Foley wants the reader to believe that his great-great-grandmother was the Aboriginal woman who migrated from her country in Sydney to Molong, where she became locally known as Ngu Ngu.

In our opinion, we think Dennis Foley might be using the same ‘selective editing’ technique that was perfected by Bruce Pascoe in his book, Dark Emu - the literary technique of selecting only those bits of the historical record that suits one’s thesis and narrative.

This range of photographs of Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandmother, over the course of her life and surrounded by her immediate family, strongly suggests that she was not Aboriginal, nor was she from an Aboriginal family. Her father, Thomas McNeilly was born in Ireland, and the parents of her mother, Charlotte Atkinson were both born in England.

All the evidence indicates that Flora Garlick was not of Aboriginal descent.

If Dennis Foley wants us to believe that she was the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu, he needs to provide real documentary evidence to support his claim.

The Business World of George and Flora Garlick

In the family photograph of the Garlick’s in Figure 28, the ‘patriarch’ seated in the middle is George Garlick. He was the husband of Flora (or the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu if we are to believe Dennis Foley). Thus, Dennis Foley is by descent George Garlick’s great-great-grandson.

Peter Reid and Dennis Foley want us to believe that during ‘the decades [in] which Dennis’s Gai-mariagal family was far away in Molong’, Sydney Aboriginals such as Dennis’s great great grandmother were ‘making their way in the world of the colonists’ (ibid., 84) even though Dennis Foley tells us that when, ‘my great-great Aboriginal grandmother left Sydney and went to Molong, but we don’t know exactly who she went with and why’ (ibid., p60).

It is a pity that Peter Reid and Dennis Foley did not do a little bit of historical research to find out exactly what Dennis’s great-great-grandmother was actually doing in Molong. It was very easy for us to discover that Flora was in Molong with her husband George Garlick and they were there operating a successful blacksmith’s business. They were colonial Australians and a solid part of the colonial enterprise.

Knowing this would have alerted Foley and Reid to the weakness of their argument - their charade about Dennis’s ancestors being displaced Aboriginal matriarchs, wandering around the Hunter Valley before finally returning, refugee-like, to Country back in Sydney where they initiated some-sort of Aboriginal ‘cultural renaissance’.

We amateurs at Dark Emu Exposed just did a few simple Google searches and this is what we found.

The 1921 Obituary of Dennis Foley’s great-great-grandfather George Garlick, (Flora’s husband or as Foley likes to call her, Ngu Ngu) tells us that,

DEATH OF MR GEO. GARLICK.

Mr. George Garlick, aged 77, an ex-resident of Molong, who has lately been residing at Muswellbrook, died on Monday. In the early days of Orange he was associated with the late David Blowes in carrying between Sydney and Orange, and later he became proprietor of one of the first blacksmith's shops, situated in the West End of Orange. In those days bullock teams were very common and the bullocks were often shod with two piece shoes.

Later he removed to Molong, where he carried on the same business for upwards of 40 years, for many years being located in Bank St., where Silk and Press now carry on business as smiths. Up to only a few years ago he was still actively carrying on his trade, when he retired and removed to Muswellbrook, where most of his family are located. In his earlier days in Molong he took an active part in public matters, and was for some years an alderman of the Municipal Council. He was a very prominent Oddfellow of long standing and one of the pioneers of the local branch of the M. U. I.O.O.F. lodge.

Fifty seven years ago he married Miss Florrie McNeilly, sister of Ald. McNeilly, of Orange. He is survived by his wife and a grown up family, viz., Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Bruck, Mrs. Watson, and Walter and Harry Garlick (all of Muswellbrook), Mrs. Woods (Gosford), Herbert (North Sydney), and H. W. Garlick (Molong), and in addition a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The late Harry Garlick, the artist, was a nephew.

The death of Mr. Garlick will be regretted by a large circle of friends throughout Molong and Orange district, by whom he was much esteemed. Deceased was a fine old gentleman, upright and honorable in all his actions, and of a kindly and industrious disposition, a man whose demise will be regretted by all who came in contact with him. The burial took place on Wednesday.

It is regrettable that Mrs. Garlick's health is very poor. On the death of her life's partner she collapsed and little hope is held out for her recovery.

At the Municipal Council meeting Ald McArdle mentioned the death of Mr Garlick, who was an alderman some years ago of the local Council, and who during his long residence in Molong had taken an active interest in advancing the welfare of the town, especially in his younger days. He moved that a letter of sympathy be forwarded to the bereaved widow and family.

Seconded by Ald Cady.

The motion was carried in silence, standing.

- Source: Molong Argus, 16 September 1921, p. 2. [our emphasis]

It is interesting to note that the shock of her husband’s death caused Flora to collapse and little hope was given to her recovery. However, recover she did and she lived for a further 19 years (Figure 27 above) - but perhaps that is why she was looking so frail and ‘dark’ in the photograph Dennis Foley is relying on for his narrative that she was the Aboriginal woman Ngu Ngu?

Images confirming what George and his wife Flora were doing all those years in Molong are readily available on the internet, if only one can be bothered to look.

Figure 33 - Photograph of Garlick’s Blacksmith Shop (Date and location not supplied) *Source: Ancestry.com user Gregory Peter Robinson originally shared this on 26 Aug 2017*

**Figure 34 - ca1895 Advertising for George Garlick: Farrier, Blacksmith & Agricultural Implement Maker, Molong, New South Wales**
‘This drawing of George Garlick was taken during 2012 from a poster inside the Molong Historical Society. The poster celebrates the building of the railway between Molong and Parkes about 1895. On the poster, George Garlick, Proprietor of Bank St, Molong identifies his business as the premier agricultural implement, shoe, forge and coach factory in the region. The poster also has drawings of the catholic church, newspaper office, railway station etc’. *Source: Ancestry.com user jeb1313 originally shared this on 10 Aug 2014.*

On a personal level, after we researchers at Dark Emu Exposed completed our work, we felt knew we knew exactly what ‘mob’ Dennis Foley was really from.

It wasn’t Gai-mariagal. Instead, it was our mob - working/lower middle-class, suburban Australians of British and European ancestry.

Born in the 1950’s, Dennis Foley was just like us - a baby-boomer who grew up with camping holidays down amongst the tea-tree at the beach, a time when fish and shell-fish were still plentiful. His Dad drove off early each morning in the second-hand car, a Plymouth, to a place us kids only knew as the Works. His Mum, like ours, stayed home to look after the house and kids. She sent us off each morning to school with our hair slicked back with a touch of Dad’s Brylcream and a packed lunch of Sunday’s cold roast beef on rough-cut white bread.

The closest any of us, including Dennis, came to Aboriginal foods in those days was the oily mutton-bird Dad insisted on buying every once in a while on a Friday night from the crowded Fish ‘n Chip shop. His hope was forever eternal that one day the family would like mutton-bird like he did - but we never did.

So no, in our opinion Dennis Foley is not Aboriginal. He, and the man who wrote the foreward to his book, Bruce Pascoe, are a pair of those old Aussie master story spinners, always good for a yarn down at the pub, always tending to cross the line to become the local '‘bull-shit artist”. We all knew they were spinning a story but in those days it was all just fun and relatively harmless. But things are much more political nowadays. Spinning a yarn can have serious consequences by impacting negatively on the real lives of real Aboriginal people.

If Dennis Foley wants to overcome the suspicions of Aboriginal people as to his right to identify as an Aboriginal Gai-mariagal man, he needs to provide some real documentary evidence - perhaps we at Dark Emu Exposed have missed something? Maybe Dennis Foley has some adoption papers, some DNA testing or birth certificates or mission records that prove he is of Aboriginal descent. We would be most willing to apologise profusely if our reasearch is wrong and Dennis Foley can in fact prove he is a Gai-mariagal man.

But we don’t think that evidence will be forthcoming.

Instead, we believe Dennis Foley is just one of our mob - an Australian baby-boomer from the suburbs, steeped in an Aussie culture that always loved ‘the big fish story’ or, as Bruce Pascoe calls it, the ‘anecdotal remembrance.’ These yarns were always good for a laugh, even if we all knew deep down they were ‘bull-shit’ - At every family gathering we would think to ourselves, “there goes Uncle Dennis again, pulling out his clap-sticks and going on about that story that Nanna was Aboriginal. What a funny little fellow.”