Open to all who served or was it? Soldier Settlement for Tasmanian Aboriginal Soldiers

On the eve of yet another war in 1939, William Cooper, leader of the Australian Aborigines League wrote to the Federal Minister of the Interior, reminding him of the way Aboriginal servicemen had been treated after World War One. Cooper informed John McEwen that thousands of 'coloured' men had enlisted in the first Australian Imperial Force and that doubtless many more would do so again if required.1 Those who had survived, Cooper went on, were pushed back to the bush, where they had 'no status, no rights, no land and ... nothing to fight for but the privilege of defending the land ... taken from him by the white race without compensation or even kindness'.