Mabo Day 2025

Mabo Day falls on the 3rd of June every year. It is a day that acknowledges the legal and cultural significance of the Mabo Decision in 1992, which overturned the concept of "terra nullius" – the idea that Australian lands belonged to "no one" and where "empty" before the arrival of Europeans.

Eddie Koiki Mabo worked at JCU as a gardener and a research assistant during the time he discovered his traditional lands did not legally belong to him, and he was known to spend time in the library for his personal research, as well as for some of the research for the Mabo cases. The Library building on the Bebegu Yumba campus (Douglas, Townsville) was named in his honour in 2008. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2021.

Dr Bonita Mabo AO, his wife, was also a significant educator and activist in the community, and supported Koiki behind the scenes in his efforts to bring his cases to court. She was a guest of honour at the library naming ceremony, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from JCU in 2018 in recognition of her tireless social justice work. She campaigned for many years to have Mabo Day acknowledged as a national public holiday, and her work is one of the reasons why the day is so widely acknowledged and celebrated even though it is not (yet) a national holiday.

We commemorate Mabo Day every year by placing flowers at the Mabo Cenotaph located near the southern entrance to the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library Building.

If you are able to visit the Mabo Library in person, pay attention to the grounds surrounding the Library, particularly near the Wadda Mooli Creek, as many of the older trees were planted by Koiki Mabo during his time here as a gardener.

If you are unable to visit in person, there are still plenty of opportunities to learn more about him: 

• The Eddie Koiki Mabo Timeline Guide, which takes your for a brief tour of Mabo's life and provides a virtual tour of the Mabo Timeline Interpretive Wall. 
• The Eddie Koiki Mabo: History in the Making ebook, which expands on Mabo's life and delves further into the Mabo legacy. The book also contains resources for schools which are CC BY licensed, allowing you to freely copy the activities and handouts.
• The Eddie Koiki Mabo Lecture Series in NQHeritage@JCU – featuring transcripts and videos of the previous Mabo Lectures held by JCU.
• And, if you want to hear a lecture from Eddie Koiki Mabo himself, we have a digitised version of Mabo's Race and Culture course lecture in NQHeritage@JCU.