Australian Rules ancestor was Aboriginal, not an Afghan

Australian Rules legend Mark Naley won a Victorian league premiership, represented Carlton (with a grand final victory in 1987), South Australia and South Adelaide, won the Magarey Medal, and was an inaugural inductee of the South Australian Football Hall of Fame.

When he was young, he noticed that some of his family members had dark complexions. He was told that his grandfather, Gordon – who had served on Gallipoli, was wounded on the Western Front, and became a prisoner of war of the Germans – had been an Afghan migrant.

In fact, Gordon Naley was not Afghan, but an Indigenous Australian. His mother was a Mirning woman: a people whose traditional territory includes the Nullarbor Plain and the Great Australian Bight, stretching from the South Australian border to Caiguna in Western Australia.

Born on Mundrabilla Station on 20 January 1884, Gordon was raised by his mother and her people. He went on to work as a shearer, station hand, horse breaker and drover, travelling from Mundrabilla Station to the Western Australian goldfields, across the Nullarbor, and along the River Murray.

His father, William McGill, was a Scotsman who had helped establish what was then just the second sheep station on the Nullarbor Plain. McGill’s second wife, Ellen, later became Gordon’s adoptive mother.

Gordon Naley enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 17 September 1914, less than seven weeks after the outbreak of the First World War. Joining H Company of the 16th Battalion, Naley and his battalion trained in Egypt before landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Immediately deployed to support the 3rd Brigade at the head of Monash Valley, they took up positions at Pope’s Hill.

A week later, they were thrown into the attack on Bloody Angle, with the battalion suffering some 340 casualties within a day. After nine days in the line of fire, the unit had lost two thirds of its strength.

Naley survived, but became dangerously ill with typhoid due to the extreme conditions on Gallipoli. Evacuated for treatment, he was not pronounced out of danger until September, during the voyage to England. During nine months of recovery in Fulham, he met Cecilia Karsh, the daughter of a local baker, and his future wife.

Returning to his battalion more than a year after he fell ill on Gallipoli, Naley rejoined his battalion on the Western Front less than a fortnight before joining a major attack on Mouquet Farm, part of the Battle of the Somme.

In April 1917, Naley and his battalion were involved in an attack on the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt. Despite capturing the first and second line of German trenches, the Australians were outflanked and bombed out of the position. Wounded by shrapnel in the left hip, Lance Corporal Naley was captured. Initially held at the large prisoner of war camp at Limburg in south-western Germany, he was later moved to Gardelegan, in central Germany.

With the end of the war, Naley was released, arriving in London on 8 January 1919. Two weeks later he married Cecilia Karsh. The couple travelled to Australia, where Corporal Gordon Naley was discharged on 21 September 1919. Settling on a soldier settler’s block in in the Berri district in South Australia, Gordon established a fruit farm and broke-in and sold horses to the local community. Four girls and two boys were born to the couple, with one of their daughters, Ellen, named after Gordon’s adoptive mother.

Gordon Naley died of respiratory failure – believed to be a result of being gassed during the war – at the Myrtlebank War Veterans Hospital on 28 April 1928, at the age of 44. He was buried in the AIF Cemetery, West Terrace, in Adelaide.

His sons, Edgar and Kenneth, served in the Second World War. His grandson Mark Naley became a successful Australian Rules footballer, only learning the truth about his family’s heritage after turning 50 years old.

Gordon Charles Naley’s name now appears on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial adjacent to the Torrens Parade Ground in Adelaide. The best on ground award for the Aboriginal Lands Cup was named the Gordon Naley Medal in 2014.