Nowra

Distinguished and Famous people from Nowra

🎼 Deborah Cheetham Fraillon

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon was born at Nowra on Yuin Country and grew up with her adoptive family in Sydney. A member of the Stolen Generations, she later reconnected with her Yorta Yorta family and Country. Her career as a soprano and composer has joined musical achievement with telling Aboriginal histories, including the opera Pecan Summer. Founding Short Black Opera created opportunities for other First Nations singers. Nowra is her birthplace within a much wider personal geography, while the work draws together performance, family recovery and a determination to make room for voices long excluded from major stages.

🖼️ Arthur and Yvonne Boyd

Arthur and Yvonne Boyd first visited Bundanon in 1971, when the Shoalhaven landscape renewed Arthur’s enthusiasm for landscape painting. They bought nearby Riversdale in 1974 and Bundanon in 1979. In 1993 they gave the properties to the Australian people, creating the basis of a continuing centre for art, education and creative residencies. These river properties lie near Nowra rather than in its town centre. Their significance extends beyond a famous painter’s retreat: the gift made the setting available to other artists and audiences, allowing a private source of inspiration to become a shared cultural resource.

🤝 Percy Mumbler

Percy Mumbler spent part of his childhood at Roseby Park near Nowra and later worked to improve housing, education, health and civil rights for Aboriginal people. In the late 1960s he collaborated with John Hatton and others to relocate unused Snowy Mountains cottages for housing at Browns Flat, south of Nowra. He also helped restructure the South Coast Aboriginal Legal Service at Nowra and supported it into old age. A storyteller and singer as well as an organiser, he was nicknamed Bing for his fondness for Bing Crosby songs. Practical reform and the sharing of cultural knowledge ran together through his life.