Clive Henry Bidja Atkinson, 1940-2022
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Uncle Clive was a Senior Elder of the Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Owners of central and northern Victoria stretching into NSW and the Barmah/Moira Forest Wetlands.
He grew up on the rivers of Dungula, Yakoa and Keila and spent much of his life following the fishing traditions handed down over thousands of years of custom and practice.
As a Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung man, Clive Atkinson created an outstanding timeline of achievements.
He combined a diversity of careers as a successful graphic designer, artist, educator, and community worker.
He used his considerable skills to celebrate and promote Aboriginal culture in his own community and to the wider world.
One of his main skills was the ability to listen to ideas and to convert them into conceptual designs and images that reflect his people’s cultural traditions and connections to country.
His love for country and his career path are best described in his own words in the short video clip to be presented at his celebration of life ceremony in Echuca.
Early life
Clive was born in Mooroopna in 1940, a year after his parents, Clive, and Iris (nee Nelson), joined with others in walking off Cummeragunja Reserve to protest against its restrictive and oppressive rules and poor living conditions.
Like many who left the reserve, the family settled on the Mooroopna river flats, living in tin shacks which often flooded forcing people to move to another site on higher ground at Dashes Paddock.
Clive’s father, a shearer by trade, was determined that his children would have a better education than his generation had been allowed under the reserve system.
From his shearing work he was able to purchase land in Echuca South and moved the family there in the mid-1950s when Clive was seven years old.
Encouragement for his natural artistic ability
Clive attended Echuca Primary School 208 and Echuca Technical College where teachers encouraged his natural ability to draw and paint.
His mum Iris also nurtured her son’s exceptional talents and entered his paintings in local art shows, which he frequently won.
Though his teachers hoped Clive would become an art teacher, he was drawn to a career in commercial art and pursued this dream after finishing Year 10.
He was awarded an art scholarship to attend the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, gaining a Diploma in Illustration, Graphic Design and Fine Art.
After a short stint in Melbourne working as a commercial artist for Myers, Clive started an apprenticeship with the Riverine Herald in his hometown Echuca.
Here he learned the printing and linotype trade.
Clive seized every opportunity to learn.
Clive said “My mother always said don’t try to be better than anyone, only try to be equal,’’ and this was important to his life’s journey.
Clive’s lifelong interest in learning led him to London and then Canada.
Overseas he gained work experience with large commercial presses which were computerising the printing industry and completed a Diploma in Advertising and Marketing in Vancouver, Canada.
After six years Clive felt the call of home and the river Dungula.
He returned to Australia and found work with printing companies in Melbourne before establishing his own business AdverType, a graphic design studio in South Melbourne.
AdverType serviced a diversity of advertising agencies and within a few years, was employing 24 people.
Clive built a fine home for his Canadian wife Linda and their two daughters, Stacey and Danielle.
He taught himself these skills as he went, including cabinet making.
In the 1980s, Clive sold his share of the business to his partner and went on to form Atkinson, Palmer, and Associates, based in Prahran.
His reputation as an Aboriginal graphic artist saw him designing logos and branding for a range of Aboriginal agencies across Australia.
He recalled that, at the time, many simply adapted the Aboriginal flag as a design emblem.
Not content with this approach, Clive created logos and branding based on well-researched rationales.
One of his greatest achievements was designing the corporate branding for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission when it formed in the early 1990s.
His memorable design managed to represent two different cultures, bringing the varied elements and symbols together in a coherent and meaningful way.
Clive designed images for many Aboriginal organisations around Australia.
He also designed campaigns, images and posters for a number of government and corporate bodies, including several series of postage stamps for Australia Post.
He explained: “I used a lot of Aboriginal imagery and drew on our cultural heritage. In the stamps I used totems, which is symbolic and has meaning.”
The effect, he said, was twofold.
The designs created a bridge, encouraging Aboriginal people to feel more connected to the mainstream (including through increased Indigenous employment), and for the mainstream to have their understanding of Aboriginal culture broadened.
Clive was a co-designer of the Bunjilaka Galleries at the Melbourne Museum in the late 1990s and provided designs for the Australian National Museum’s Indigenous galleries.
In 2015, he designed the Carlton jumper for the AFL Indigenous round.
In all these years, Clive never stopped painting and sculpting, with exhibitions of his traditional Indigenous paintings and pottery designs around Australia, as well as in Germany and Canada, including an eight-panel mural at Victoria University in 2002.
Mirrimbeena Aboriginal Education Group:
In 1995, Clive realised a long-held dream to move back to his traditional country near the Goulburn (Kaiela) and Murray Rivers (Dungula) with his wife Judy and their young son Bidja.
He pioneered the creation of “Bush Furniture”.
One-off pieces of timber were sourced from the forest floor of the river areas around Echuca to make artefacts and furniture.
Together with Judy he formed Mirrimbeena Aboriginal Education Group in 2001, a registered Adult, Community and Further Education provider.
Among its programs, Mirrimbeena offered training in the construction of bush furniture. It’s guiding philosophy was based on Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people working and sharing together with a common interest.
It is this philosophy which saw Clive become actively involved in community projects in the Echuca-Moama area.
He was a member of the steering committee for additions to the Echuca Hospital and was also involved in the Bridge Arts Project to create an outdoor art installation on the Murray River to portray the history of the Murray-Goulburn region.
In 2007 when Judy secured an area of the Echuca Cemetery as an Aboriginal resting place, Clive assisted with the design and layout of the Indigenous section, the first of its kind in Victoria.
They followed this achievement with the design of a similar Dreamtime precinct in the Ballarat Cemetery, offering a place where Wadawurrung people can be laid to rest in their own country.
Over his long career, Clive always valued learning from and working in collaboration with others.
He believed that hard work brings its own rewards, and that professionalism is all important.
As he put it ‘’Whether you’re designing for the local little flower show or some big organisation, you always treat the project at the same level’’.
Music:
On the music front Clive and his family carried on the music tradition influenced by their people who lived on Maloga and Cummeragunja.
He learned to play guitar at an early age and formed the legendary Shades band which was one of the popular dance bands in the region of the 1960s up till the ’80s.
Other members of the band were his two brothers Wayne and Graham and his brother-in-law Paul Burchill, making it essentially a family group.
The band achieved accolades for many performances, winning the battle of the bands competition in Benalla and other rewards for music excellence.
Most of the members are still active in music praising the fact that they are one of the longest surviving bands who can still cut it when family gigs come up for a celebration.
Clive also used his prowess in music to initiate the Echuca Country Music Club in the late ’80s which continues to hold its fortnightly gigs for country music enthusiasts.
Another feather in the cap to add to the diversity of contributions Clive has made in his lifetime, leaving a legacy of inspiration for all of us to reflect upon today.
CLIVE ATKINSON’S FUNERAL WILL BE HELD ON TUESDAY, JULY 19, FROM 11AM AT THE DUNGALA FUNCTION CENTRE, MOAMA.