On Reconciliation Week, many Australians will reflect on its theme, “Bridging Now to Next”, and the ongoing connection between the past, present, and future. We learn from the past, look to the future, and push forward together on the reconciliation journey. Joseph Flick stands as a quiet force for remembrance and restoration.
As a proud Gamilaroi, Yullaroi and Bigambul man from north-western New South Wales, Joseph has spent more than a decade reconnecting Aboriginal families with their ancestors who fought and died for a nation that had denied them.
His mission began with a family memory. “It commenced with my knowledge as a young boy watching my pop march in Anzac Day ceremonies,” he recalls. His grandfather, Mick Flick, served in World War I, returning home with mementos of battle—a tin helmet with a dent and his service rifle, which the children were forbidden to touch. But what stayed with Joseph was what happened after the march.
“As he’d walk up to the front door, they would say, ‘Sorry Mick, go around the back—we’ll pass you a beer through the window.’ I used to think just how demoralising, degrading and totally wrong that was,” Joseph says. “He wanted to be part of it. He played his part in the defence of our country overseas—and then was excluded from it here.”
Hundreds of Aboriginal soldiers shared the same fate. They returned home to a country that refused to recognise them as citizens, denied their children schooling, denied them land grants and denied them access to the Returned & Services League—with just the offer of a beer passed through a side door.
Joseph’s path of truth-telling took shape in 2013 during a footy trip to France, where he visited Villers-Bretonneux. There, in a Franco-Australian museum, he saw an Aboriginal flag and a single paragraph noting that “at least 289 Aboriginal men from Australia came and fought in World War I.” Only two names were mentioned.
“This really doesn’t do justice to our people,” Joseph told the staff. “Can I come back next year and help you do something?” And he did.
Since then, Joseph has returned to Europe five times, locating the burial sites of soldiers from across western NSW. “It started off with two soldiers,” he says, “and then grew from there.” He tells the story of Joseph Knight, who died of pneumonia a month after arriving in England, and whose brothers William and Albert—also from Bourke—each received medals for bravery. “I got really emotional when I talked about them. But I was just really happy I was able to do that, even 98 years after Joseph died.”
One of the most powerful moments came when Joseph brought soil from Burra Bee Dee Mission in Coonabarabran and sprinkled it on the grave of William Allan Irwin, who had never made it home. “It was a way of connecting him back to Country,” Joseph says. Since then, Irwin has been granted honorary citizenship in the French region of the Somme—a place that welcomed him more fully than his own country ever did.
But Joseph’s work is not about blame. “It’s not about pointing the finger,” he says. “I acknowledge that some of those policies and practices were totally wrong. But I can forgive some of that. What matters is making things right.”
In his talks with students—both overseas and in Australia—Joseph doesn’t shy away from the hard truths. “I tell them about the massacres, the Stolen Generations, the racial discrimination that we faced and still face,” he says. “It’s not just about the soldiers. It’s the whole story.” And yet, his approach is measured, generous. “There’s a lot of anger inside me,” he admits. “But the bigger goal is about awareness and understanding—who we are, what we’ve been through, and why we remember.”
That sense of reconciliation—of restoring dignity and reuniting spirits with Country—is at the heart of Joseph’s work. “We haven’t forgotten you,” he says of the soldiers. “I try to honour all the fallen. I stand at the graves of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian soldiers, and those of other nations and say, ‘We respect you. We honour you. Thank you.’”
Joseph’s Churchill Fellowship gave him the opportunity to go further. “It gave me the ability to tell a mob story,” he says. “These men left their country to go and fight in France and Belgium. They wouldn’t have even known where those places were.”
Now, he brings home photos of headstones, stories of bravery, and a deep sense of connection to descendants who may never have known their great-grandfathers.
In the end, Joseph Flick’s journey is one of reconciliation, not only between people, but between memory and truth, absence and presence, Country and kin. And in this week of reflection, his work reminds us all: remembrance is not just about honouring the fallen, but about making things right.