‘As I grew up so did the Yumba’: Aboriginal mobility and growth at Cunnamulla

The south-west Queensland town of Cunnamulla has been home to the largest Aboriginal community in the region since the 1940s.This is despite the town's relatively small general population, and its construction in the national media as an emblem of outback racism and Indigenous victimhood.Recent postcolonial histories have explored the mobilities of Aboriginal peoples during the twentieth century, showing how space was used to subvert governmental control.In this article I explore the historical dynamics of movement around Cunnamulla during this period to unearth the town's unique story as the centre of a dynamic network of Indigenous mobility, primarily through its lived experience.I argue that the cause of the unprecedented number of Aboriginal inhabitants was caused by an interplay between the Cunnamulla's micro-climate of Aboriginal agency and administrative decisions made by the Queensland State Government Department of Native Affairs.Bringing this unexamined and remarkable phenomenon into focus reveals the broader story of spatial adaptability and resistance enacted by Aboriginal peoples across the region.In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody determined that Cunnamulla was the largest Aboriginal population centre in south-west Queensland. 2 In fact, spanning from the South Australian border in the west, to the Great Dividing 1 Wharton, Yumba Days, 2. 2