Proud Winninninni woman, 'Aunty' Kerrie Doyle. Really? - Part 1 — Dark Emu Exposed

Jan 2

Jan 2 Proud Winninninni woman, 'Aunty' Kerrie Doyle. Really? - Part 1

Kerrie Doyle, Just Making Stuff Up, Fakes

Update 2 Jan 2023: This post has been cleared by our lawyers and we now repost it.

The Tip-Offs

This post is about a woman who says she is Aboriginal. She goes by the name of Aunty Kerrie Doyle.

Now, we at Dark Emu Exposed at this stage don’t know one way or the other whether she really is Aboriginal or not. But we have received a stream of ‘tip-offs’ from Aboriginal people who claim she is not Aboriginal and they implore us to help them investigate Kerrie Doyle’s claims regarding her Indigeneity.

As we have stressed before, everybody is fully entitled to define their own identity - it should never be up to anyone else to define who you are, or who you can or can’t be. BUT BUT BUT, the moment you step into the public square and put your hand out for a benefit or a right that in some way is dependent on your ancestry, ethnicity or citizenship, then it is incumbent upon you to prove your identity (or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship) as required, before our society grants you that benefit or right.

If you want an Australian passport you need to provide the proof that you are Australian by birth or citizenship; if you want to apply for an Indigenous writer’s prize, then you need to prove you are Indigenous; or if you want an Indigenous academic position at Sydney University, then you need to prove you are Indigenous.

Our Journey Begins

In this series of posts we will attempt to unravel the alleged ancestry of Kerrie Doyle and allow our readers to make up their own minds as to whether she really is Indigenous and can rightly claim Aboriginal Elder status as, Aunty Kerry Doyle. We will also investigate details of the ‘benefits’ and ‘privileges’ she has received - benefits and privileges she was only entitled to because of her Indigeneity.

Kerrie Doyle has made, or provided information to others to make, a number of claims about herself.

Eleven years ago in 2013, Kerrie Doyle provided the following biographical information on her life to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for an article in the Indigenous News Section of their monthly newsletter.

**Figure 1 - *Advocate*, Nov 6, 2013, Vol. 20, No. 3, NTEU member magazine.** ***Source***

This article highlighted her success at ‘being the first Indigenous Australian woman to graduate from Oxford University.’ In this article, Kerrie Doyle tells us that

- she is a ‘Winninninni’ woman, and

- she applied successfully for a, ‘Roberta Sykes Scholarship [which] provides partial funding to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander postgraduate students who wish to undertake studies at recognised overseas universities’ and ‘to be eligible, applicants must: … be of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent, identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and be accepted as such by the community in which they live or have lived.’

From the Roberta Sykes scholarship webpage we also learn that she, ‘is a mission-born Winninninni woman who grew up on Darkingjung country in New South Wales. Her father was a well-known Aboriginal artist and her mother was one of the first Aboriginal Education Assistants in primary school settings’.

- Source: Roberta Sykes Scholar

In a Chapter of a 2005 book, she tells us that she is a ‘Territorian’, that is, she was born in the Northern Territory. This is where the ‘mission’ was that she claims she was born on, and where she spent her early childhood years fearful of being ‘stolen.’

**Figure 2 - Excerpt from the book, *Australian Nurses Stories*, published by The Australian Government, 2005. Full Chapter on Kerri Doyle** ***here***

**Figure 3 - Excerpts from the book, *Australian Nurses Stories*, published by The Australian Government, 2005.**

All the above confirms that Kerrie Doyle has openly claimed that she is an Aboriginal woman, born and raised in her early years on a mission in the NT and is from the Winninninni tribe. As a young nurse, she identified as an Aboriginal although she worked hard to keep her ancestry a relative secret.

By 2014 however, she was no longer hiding her Aboriginality as we read in the Indigenous Studies newsletter at the Australian National University:

**Figure 4 - Excerpts from the ANU Indigenous Studies newsletter No. 19, May 2014, p5.** ***Source***

Similarly in 2020, her Western Sydney University biography tells us:

‘Western Sydney University is pleased to announce Winninninni woman Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle as the inaugural Associate Dean Indigenous Health within the School of Medicine. Professor Doyle was among the first cohort of Aboriginal people to graduate from Oxford University, and is the second Indigenous woman to be appointed an Associate Dean at the University…

Professor Doyle is a member of the Council of Elders for the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (CATSINaM); and board member for Ngaramura Aboriginal and Pacific Islander Corporation’

- Source: Western Sydney University August 2020.

Questions are Raised

All of these claims of Aboriginality by Kerrie Doyle did not go unquestioned by other Aboriginal people. Some asked, who on earth are the Winninninni tribe?

No-one had ever heard of this tribe. Anthropologist Dr Norman Tindale never recorded a tribe with that name as ever having existed when he compiled his comprehensive book, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names, (1974).

AIATSIS do not include a tribe by the name of Winninninni in their Indigenous map of Australia.

Kerrie Doyle and her university employers were reportedly contacted in early 2021 for comment on where Kerrie Doyle was actually born. They were asked for proof of her Aboriginality, but no clear answers were forthcoming - at one stage, she said she was from “an Aboriginal mob from West Queensland”; at another stage she said that she was, “the daughter of a renowned Aboriginal artist” who had “raised her with the knowledge that they are descendants of the Winninninni people of southern Queensland”.

These claims only add to the confusion given that Kerrie Doyle recounts in her nursing story above that she was from a mission and was ‘a Territorian.’

This confused background was what Aunty Kerri Doyle expected the world to believe about her Aboriginality as of early 2021.

The Birth of Kerrie Esme Doyle

The easiest way to check a person’s claims as to where they were born is to view their birth certificate. If Kerrie Doyle claims that she was born ‘on a mission’ in either ‘West Queensland’, ‘Southern Queensland’ or the ‘Northern Territory’, then this should be reflected on her birth certificate.

But Kerrie Doyle to our knowledge has not provided a copy of her birth certificate to support her claims to anyone that is questioning her place of birth. And that is her complete right. Similarly, we are all rightly protected by privacy laws that prevents the third party access to each of our birth records for 100 year after our birth dates. In Kerrie Doyle’s case, that means that her birth certificate cannot be accessed by us, independent of her approval, until 2057 (We do know that Kerrie Doyle was born in 1957 as explained below).

Even though her birth certificate cannot be accessed, new search engine algorithms can be used to scan the world’s databases to uncover data not previously found. For example, information has now been located that suggests that Kerrie Esme Doyle was NOT born in West Queensland, Southern Queensland or even the Northern Territory - in fact, this new information suggests that she was NOT even born in Australia.

But before we reveal this new information, we need to go back a few years to the early 1950s before Kerrie Doyle was born and see who her parents were, and what they were doing prior to Kerrie’s birth.

The Flying Boat to Vanuatu

On Wednesday 18 August 1954, the Qantas flying boat set off from Sydney bound for the New Hebrides [Vanuatu]. On-board was a newly-wed couple, Trevor John Lumsden and his young, new wife Patricia Aline Lumsden (nee Leatham). They were planning to make the New Hebrides their home for the next two years, as reported in the ‘Wedding Bells’ section of a local newspaper in Fairfield, Sydney.

**Figure 5 - The Biz (Fairfield, NSW) Wed 1 Sep 1954, p18, Wedding Bells,** ***Source***

**Figure 6 - Marriage record excerpt for Kerrie Esme Doyle’s (nee Lumsden) parents**

The next time we hear of this young couple is in 1957 in Papua New Guinea when the birth of a baby girl, their second, was announced in the same newspaper from Fairfield in Sydney, NSW,

‘Mrs. G. Leatham, of Delamere Street, Canley Vale, is at present visiting her daughter [and son-] in-law in Tari, New Guinea. Mr. and Mrs. Lumsden are receiving congratulations on the birth of a baby girl, this being their second daughter.’

Figure 7 - The Biz (Fairfield, NSW) Wed 10 Jul 1957, p10, PERSONAL. This newpaper notice is describing Kerrie’s grandmother, Mrs G. Leatham visiting her daughter [Kerrie’s mum] in PNG at the birth of Kerrie. ***Source***
The visit occurred because we have located the August 1957 returning passenger card for Kerrie’s grandmother Esme Stella Leatham (Mrs G Leatham) who is listed as being ‘European’ and NOT Aboriginal ***here***

How do we know that this birth notice is for our Kerrie Esme Lumsden (later Doyle)?

Because firstly, we have found hints from family trees independently posted on-line by the family members of Kerrie Esme Doyle.

Figure 8 shows a post suggesting that Trevor Lumsden and his wife Patricia Aline’s (nee Leatham) first daughter is named Lorraine, born 14 April 1955.

Additionally, Figure 9 shows a post suggesting that their second daughter is named Kerri Esme. Note that both the posts show that the two girls, Lorraine and Kerri Esme were adopted by a Robert Doyle in 1975. This correlates with Kerrie Esme now calling herself by the family name Doyle. [This adoption will be corroborated by other evidence in a later post in this series]

**Figure 8 - Family tree posted by a family member confirming the birth date of Lorraine Lumsden (later Doyle) as 14 April 1955.** ***Source***

**Figure 9 - Family tree posted by a family member confirming the birth date of Kerrie Esme Lumsden (later Doyle) as 28 June 1957.** ***Source***

These community-based family trees are good evidence that the baby girl, whose birth was announced in the newspaper on July 10 1957 is our Kerrie Esme Lumsden (later Doyle) born two weeks before on June 28th 1957 in the town of Tari in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.

And then further evidence was found that the baby girl born in Tari on 28 June 1957 was Kerrie Esme Doyle (nee Lumsden).

On the 15th of December 1957, some six months after Kerrie Esme’s birth, a mother and her two daughters boarded a flight from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea and headed back to Sydney, Australia. We have located the Incoming Passenger Cards for these three arrivals - for the mother Patricia Aline Lumsden (Fig. 10), her 2-year-old daughter Lorraine (Fig. 11), and a baby daughter with the name Kerrie Esme (Fig. 12). This small, 6-month-old baby is our Kerrie Esme Doyle (nee Lumsden) and she is arriving in Australia for the first time in her life after being born in Tari, PNG.

Figure 10 - Patricia Aline Lumsden’s Arrival Card into Australia 15/12/1957. This is Kerrie Esme’s mother. *Source Incoming Passenger Cards - Aircraft - 1957 NSW DECEMBER BOX 7, p. 1781, 1779, 1783, National Archives of Australia*

Figure 11 - Lorraine Lumsden’s Arrival Card into Australia 15/12/1957. This is Kerrie Esme’s 2-year-old sister. *Source Incoming Passenger Cards - Aircraft - 1957 NSW DECEMBER BOX 7, p. 1781, 1779, 1783, National Archives of Australia*

Figure 12 - Kerrie Esme Lumsden’s Arrival Card into Australia 15/12/1957. This is our 6-month old baby Kerrie Esme. *Source Incoming Passenger Cards - Aircraft - 1957 NSW DECEMBER BOX 7, p. 1781, 1779, 1783, National Archives of Australia*

These arrival cards provide the corrobrating proof that ‘Aunty’ Kerrie Esme Doyle (nee Lumsden) was born in Tari Papua New Guinea on the 28th of June 1957. Her grandmother visited the new-born Kerrie Esme on the 10th of July 1957, a week or so after Kerrie’s birth as reported in the newspaper (Figure 7).

Within six months of Kerrie’s birth, it appears that things might not be going well health-wise for Patricia Aline Lumsden. She is recorded as having returned to Australia on the 15th of December 1957 with her two small daughters, the reason being ‘hospitalisation’, as noted in Section 12 of her Arrival Card. Other points on these arrival cards to note are that the three of them are described as being of European Racial Origin (Red Code 0) and Australian by Nationality (Red Code 00).

There is no record that they are an Aboriginal family.

Until recently, Aboriginal Winninninni woman, Aunty Kerrie Esme Doyle has made no public mention that she was in fact born in Tari, Papua New Guinea. But that was about to change on the 28th of May 2021.

For the avoidance of doubt, we have published below the full extract of the registration notice for the Ngaramura Indigenous Corporation, that was established under Commonwealth legislation on 28 May 2021.

One of the directors has a familiar name - Kerrie Esme Doyle - who is registered as a foundational Director and Member.

Readers are directed to observe the date and place of birth that the director Kerrie Doyle has declared on page 1 of this extract - “28th June 1957, Tari, NSW.”

This declaration of her birthday corroborates our evidence that we have independently uncovered. But we note that there is no town in NSW called Tari. A town with the spelling of ‘Taree’ is a well-known, mid-north coast town in NSW, but this town to our knowledge is never spelt as ‘Tari’.

Some might think that Kerrie Esme Doyle might have purposely or accidentally conflated the town of her birth, Tari in PNG, with the similarly pronounced town in NSW, Taree?

Still others might think that she is perhaps trying to make it look like she was born in Australia and not overseas?

At this stage, Dark Emu Exposed will let readers draw their own conclusions.

**Figures 13 - Extract of Aunty Kerrie Doyle’s Ngaramura Indigenous Corporation.** ***Source***

Some readers might think that putting the birth place as ‘Tari, NSW’ may possibly be seen by as having the potential to misled the Commonwealth. We don’t know, but we understand that the Office of the Registrar of indigenous Corporations (ORIC) has been written to in an effort to clarify this point. We will post the response should it be forthcoming.

It is quite possible that Kerrie Doyle has Aboriginal descent by another line of her family tree and our investigations will continue to see if we can hopefully confirm this.

But at this stage, her claims of being born, and growing up, on a mission in outback Australia just look like they are made up.