Moree-born Nerida Saunders returned home to share the story of a 38-year public service career that has taken her from the Moree Mission to senior executive roles across three states. Photo: Moree Online News
Nerida Saunders grew up on the Moree Mission knowing “the welfare” as something Aboriginal families feared.
Years later, after deciding teaching was not for her, she chose a job with the Department of Community Services because it offered something new and different. Only after beginning her training did she fully understand what that choice meant.
Back in Moree on Friday, August 14, Ms Saunders told members of Moree Probus at the Uniting Church Hall how that decision became the beginning of a 38-year public service career spanning New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia.
The second-youngest of nine surviving children, Ms Saunders spent her early years on the Moree Mission. With the mission school closing, she started kindergarten at Moree West before later attending Moree East, then continued through to Year 12 at Courallie High School.
Ms Saunders said she became Courallie’s first Aboriginal girls’ school captain in 1981.
At the time, her ambitions were pointing towards teaching. Sunday school teaching at All Saints Anglican Church during Years 11 and 12 led her towards education, and she left Moree to study primary teaching at Armidale Teachers College.
A six-week placement at Tamworth West Primary School changed that direction. Teaching, she decided, was not for her.
Ms Saunders applied for positions with both the Department of Education and the Department of Community Services and was offered both. She chose DOCS and headed to Sydney for three months of live-in training.
Then came the realisation.
She had gone to work for “the welfare”.
“I came home, talked to my mum and my aunties,” Ms Saunders said.
“The one message they gave me which was clear was saying, you can’t make a change from the outside, you’ve got to be on the inside.”
She stayed, and that decision would shape the next 38 years.
After her father died in 1989, Ms Saunders returned to Moree as a DOCS district officer. Her manager was Mr Ian Randall, a man she had known very differently as a child.
“As a kid growing up, we all knew you run from Mr Randall,” Ms Saunders said.
For the first week, the old habit was hard to shake.
“I kept referring to him as Mr Randall,” she said.
Mr Randall reminded her: “Nerida, I’m your colleague.”
It was a small exchange, but one that captured how much had changed. The girl who had grown up wary of “the welfare” was now working inside it, in her own hometown.
Over the years that followed, Ms Saunders moved through increasingly senior roles in northern NSW before returning to Moree to take over the office Mr Randall had led for more than three decades.
From there, the opportunities became bigger and further from home.
A regional director’s role took Ms Saunders to Cairns, with responsibility for a vast area stretching through Cape York towards the Torres Strait, west towards Mornington Island and Mount Isa, and south towards Townsville. She had never lived in Cairns and knew no-one there.
“I’d learnt very early on if I wanted to have a career, then I had to take risks,” Ms Saunders said.
The next risk took her to South Australia.
Ms Saunders told the gathering she was headhunted by the South Australian Government to lead Children, Youth and Family Services. The Institute of Public Administration Australia records her as the first Aboriginal Executive Director of Children, Youth and Family Services in South Australia.
She had gone from entering DOCS as a trainee to heading a government agency in about 13 years.
What began as another move away from home became a career in South Australia spanning more than two decades. Ms Saunders went on to lead the Aboriginal Housing Authority before moving into Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation in 2009.
Today, Ms Saunders PSM FIPAA is Executive Director, Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation in the South Australian Attorney-General’s Department. By her own count, 27 of her 38 years in public service have been spent at senior executive level.
Those years have taken Ms Saunders into remote parts of Australia and some of the major issues affecting Aboriginal communities. She singled out her involvement in the formal handback of Maralinga village and lands to the Maralinga Tjarutja people as one of the highlights of her career.
Her public service has also brought national recognition.
In 2016, Ms Saunders received the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service through leadership and advocacy in Aboriginal affairs and reconciliation.
In 2022, she was made a National Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia.
Yet in telling the story of how she reached those positions, Ms Saunders repeatedly came back to Moree.
Growing up on the mission gave her a strong sense of community, belonging and family, and that grounding followed her into public service.
“The only difference between me and any client that I ever worked with was the fact that I had accessed information,” Ms Saunders said.
“My job was to share information with other people so they could have the same choices and be informed to make the decisions.”
There have been plenty of miles between the Moree Mission and Ms Saunders’ career in South Australia, but home remained central to the way she told the story.
“You can grow up in a town like Moree, and when you take risks in your life and in your career, you can achieve many things,” Ms Saunders said.
Wherever those risks took her, there was always somewhere to come back to.
“And that landing spot was always family and home in Moree for me.”
