RUBY EILEEN HAYWARD

Noongar elder, health worker and language keeper who welcomed Perth to Country

The family of Aunty Ruby Hayward has given permission for her name and story to be shared here, and asks that readers speak of her with the care she showed everyone. Kaya, she said to every room she entered, and the room usually answered. Born in January 1943 on Ballardong Noongar country near York in Western Australia, she grew up in a tin-roofed house on the edge of town, learning Noongar words from her grandmother as they gathered quandongs and dug for mallee roots.

In 1964 she moved to Perth, where she raised six children, cleaned offices at night and studied for a community health certificate by day. From 1978 to 2003 she worked as an Aboriginal Health Worker at Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service in East Perth, driving elderly patients to appointments in her old Holden, translating between nurses and families, and sitting up with the dying so that no one passed alone. She never took credit for the lives she helped steady, and the younger health workers she trained still use her phrase: 'Walk beside, not in front.'

After retiring she became one of Perth's most requested Noongar elders to give a Welcome to Country, speaking with the blessing of Whadjuk elders at school assemblies, Kings Park ceremonies and Perth Festival events, in the words she had learnt from her grandmother. She taught Noongar language to children at more than twenty schools, singing the names of the animals and the seasons until they stuck. She loved scones, country music, the Fremantle Dockers and her ute. She died peacefully on 21 July 2025, aged eighty-two, surrounded by family. She leaves her children, her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her sister Betty, and a generation of Noongar kids who greet each morning with kaya.

“Walk beside, not in front. And always say kaya.”