The Fethafoot Chronicles

Pem is a 63 year old indigenous man of Kabi Kabi Aboriginal and Sth Sea Islander Australian descent. The Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi), nation are caretakers of the mainland area from approximately – the Fraser to Moreton Islands area of the SE-Qld coast-line. Pem was born in Gladstone, Qld and worked for many years of his young life in the Qld Railways and construction industries in Queensland, moving to Aboriginal Health in his mid twenty’s and back to construction, until injuries forced him into trying an academic pathway in 1990. Pem began a BA – majoring in Literature and Aboriginal Studies at CQU in Central Qld at thirty-six years of age. He graduated ten years later while working for Central Qld Uni in the multi-media section. During this time Pem also gained a certificate in Film & Television production at AFTRS in Sydney. In 2004, after 14 years at a University Pem took his family to the Aboriginal community of Aurukun on Cape York, where he met Noel Pearson. Together with Tanya Major from Kowanyama, they created the Higher Expectations Program (HEP): a secondary scholarship, sponsored by Macquarie Bank’s philanthropic arm MGF, in an attempt to solve some of the huge social problems and high school dropout rate in the Cape’s indigenous remote communities. HEP is still working today and to date has 60+ university graduates – all ‘firsts’ from those remote communities. Currently Pem has had to stop work owing to several severe construction work injuries and lives in Far North Qld, where he is in the process of writing several more fiction-fantasy tales. He plays guitar, loves and photographs the holistic world, writes poetry and songs about his people and world events - and tries to sing occasionally. Pem has four uniquely wonderful children and six fan-bloody-tastic grandchildren, who will probably take over the world:) Thank-you for 'listening'. Pemulwuy Weeatunga (aka John M Wenitong)…