Jimmy Clements had a message for the people of Australia.

“I have opened your Parliament House on my own ground,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “Now you can go and look at it.”

It was May, 1927.

Jimmy Clements, known as “King Billy”, wasn’t about to obey police instructions to leave the opening of Australia’s first parliament house.Credit: IDIDJ Aust

Clements, an Aboriginal man aged around 80, was asserting sovereignty over the land in Canberra on which white Australians had built their first parliament house, a white wedding cake of a thing sitting in an empty paddock.

John Noble at the opening of Parliament House, May 1927.Credit: The Burgess Collection, Macleay Museum

As far as he was concerned, although British royals – the Duke and Duchess of York – had been invited to do the honours, he, Jimmy Clements, had done the job righteously by his mere presence. Now it was his pleasure to grant permission to latecomers to his country to visit the building.

The story of Jimmy Clements has been told in various forms ever since he and his fellow Wiradjuri elder John Noble turned up, uninvited, to the ceremonial opening of the parliament building on May 9, 1927.

Clements, real name Nangar but also known as King Billy, and Noble, named Ooloogan but known as Marvellous, have often enough been portrayed as curiosities at the grand event.

Nangar and Ooloogan, however, were initiated men; formidable representatives of their people.

Given events this week, their stand ought........

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