Tess Allas is Curator, First Nations, at the Australian Museum – on secondment from Museums of History NSW. She is also a PSA delegate, and Deputy Chair of the Cultural Institutions Advisory Group.

A tireless advocate for workplace fairness and union intervention, Ms Allas has a strong track record of encouraging colleagues to become members, then encouraging members to become delegates.

Ms Allas said a big part of her sense of justice and human rights comes from her unionist and activist grandfather, Jack Tattersall. Jack was born in central western NSW in the late 19th century. A very smart kid who was educated at a time when Indigenous kids in the outback rarely got the chance at learning literacy, he learned skills that would later enable him to achieve things against all odds.

After serving in the First World War, Jack and his brother started working on the docks at Port Kembla, joining the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF).

In 1937, discussion on the dock, and in union meetings started to centre around the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in December that year. Referred to as the ‘Rape of Nanjing’, it was the most infamous example of Japanese brutality in China. Estimates suggest that the Japanese massacred 300,000 people in and around the city, most of them civilians.

Almost one year later the WWF went on strike in solidarity with the Chinese people. The strikers refused to load pig iron – low-grade steel used for ammunition – bound for the military in Japan on the SS Dalfram. Mr Tattersall was a key organiser on the Port Kembla dock, ensuring that all his Aboriginal comrades, and eventually white workers, joined the strike.

After 10 weeks of striking, and 10 weeks with no pay, the union secured a guarantee that no pig iron would be sent to Japan.

After being moved from Hill 60 to the offictal camp near Coomaditchie Lagoon in the late 30s, Mr Tattersall went on to campaign to preserve Hill 60’s role as an Aboriginal neighbourhood.

The community became known as Coomaditchie, due to its proximity to the Coomaditchie Lagoon. And in the early 1990s the founding of the Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation began providing support and services to the broader community, enabling the artistic expression of the many Indigenous artists in the south coast area of NSW.

Ms Allas knew nothing of this growing up in Wollongong so close to where her grandfather had worked so hard for his community. But in the early 1990s she and her family reached out to Link-Up NSW Aboriginal Corporation. Link-Up assists all Aboriginal people who have been directly affected by past government policies, including separation from family. It was through the work of Link-Up that Tess and her family were reunited with Jack’s cousins, and from there, the few stories Tess’s grandmother had told her about her grandfather linked with the family who knew him. She then began her own research about what he’d done for his community.

As soon as Tess saw the work the artists of Coomaditchie created, she knew there was an exhibition that needed to happen. She commissioned the Coomaditchie: The Art of Place exhibition, which was originally staged at Wollongong Art Gallery in 2023 then at the Museum of Sydney in 2024.

It’s clear when Tess talks about her grandfather, his influence is positive and energising. “When my grandmother talked about Jack, he was like a myth, like this powerful force that was always there.”