Wp/nys/Cape Riche Bobby

Koora nitja baal Bobby Minang boodjar nyniny.

Cape Riche Bobby, from the cape north-east of Albany, was keny of many Noongar men around Albany who were given the name ‘Bobby’ in the nineteenth century. He had experience with non-Aboriginal people, wer knew about guns as the following from a nineteenth century newspaper article reveals:

“ The natives have had so much of their own way lately, that half measures will not do with them now; for instance, a party of them came to one of the stations on the Salt River a few days ago, and they were driving away about 20 of the sheep; the shepherd pointed a gun that he had at them to frighten them, but instead of which, they came all round him with their spears fixed, and told him if he did not put it down, they would spear him; he put the gun down, and one that goes by the name of Cape Riche Bobby, and who is leader of a strong party of the natives, took hold of the gun, and took out the flint; returned the ramrod, and sprung it in the barrel; finding there was nothing in the gun, he said to the shepherd ‘that gun nothing in him; you cannot shoot him; all the same [as a] piece of wood’, and then threw the gun away from him. ”