Elders profile - Garry Ronan is on a mission to open doors for the next generation
Garry Ronan is an Wilunyu Nhanaghardi Elder, born in Geraldton in 1958. He is the youngest of 5 children of Evelyn Dodd and William Ronan (both deceased), with more than 20 years between him and his eldest brother. He humbly describes himself as ‘just a pup’, but the reality is as the last of his siblings along with his sister, he is an important Elder for his family as well as the wider community.
Garry has no shortage of life experience – he has worked throughout the state as a rigger and crane operator. He was in the Pilbara in the heady days of the 1980s as mining took off and made a good living, putting his success down to his strict work ethic. “I think it’s critically important with anything you do, to do it well. Do it properly. My old man used to say if you’re going to do a job you’ve got to do it right or don’t do it at all. Even though I didn’t fully understand the importance of that being a kid, it stuck with me and I’ve applied that in everything I do.”
This attitude served him well up north, but as the 1990s loomed, Garry felt the call to return home to Geraldton.“One day I just said, ‘What am I still doing here?’…we wanted to come home and buy a home here.”After returning to Geraldton with his family, Garry threw himself into making his community a better place. He began working in the Special Service Centre of the Commonwealth Employment Service, where he would cold call businesses to take on Yamatji people. “It was very difficult to get Aboriginal people into jobs where traditionally they had just not been. People didn’t want to give anyone a go unless there was something in it for them.
[The program administered] had the ability to offer the employer, for the first 6 weeks of their employment, if they took that person on with a view to keeping them, 100% of the wage. After a while, word got around, and we were placing people all over, in different industries. The kind of results we were getting had not been achieved before. It was a tough gig, but Garry was tougher because he wanted to make sure Yamatji people had the same opportunity to succeed as everyone else.
Never one to stand still, Garry kept moving on to bigger and better things. He and his wife Alana started a concrete kerbing business, he joined the Midwest Development Commission Board and was the first Manager of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program, first at Bundiyarra, then at Wila Gutharra. Somewhere amongst all this, he found time, through his consultancy business, to work for the Health Department in setting up the first school-based traineeship at Geraldton Senior High School, a first for Western Australia. Working for his people runs in the family for Garry, so it felt like this kind of work was continuing the legacy of his old people. “My family members (amongst others) fought for many years to get more opportunities for Aboriginal people to be treated better – better jobs, better opportunities. Even before I was born that was going on. And I enjoy that kind of thing, making change for the better.”
These days, at 65, Garry is still busy with his consultancy Minda Gaya, which comes from the Wajarri language and translates as ‘shady kurrajong’. This tree is culturally significant for many groups across Australia – it’s a life-sustaining tree for those in the desert who need water – and it was this meaning that Garry wanted to capture. “I wanted to offer something in my business that was really going to mean something. Something beneficial, life-sustaining, [that offers] long term value, and the impact it could have would be life-changing for people.”
Family is at the heart of everything Garry does. He and his wife Alana – they’ve been together since they were in high school – have 4 children and 12 grandchildren, and it’s their future he has in mind as he builds his legacy. What is most important for their future, in his eyes, is opportunity – and that means people who can help open doors to success.“I want to be remembered as someone who’s been able to add value to others along their path. I would never have been able to be successful if it wasn’t for people giving me the opportunities. Sometimes it’s so difficult to get that opportunity, just to open the door, to get a look in. And you can expand on it after that. But many don’t get that chance.” Thanks to Garry, many have found an open door to success, and we hope he keeps opening them for many years to come.