Bert Groves Achievements & TURNING POINT

Achievements: 

•  In February 1958_ Bert Groves, Jeff Barnes held three Aboriginal representatives at the Adelaide meeting where the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement was formed 
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• In 1937  _Groves' political activism stretched back when he joined William Ferguson's Aborigines Progressive Association.
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• In late 1930s _ Concerned at the poor housing, unemployment and inadequate education experienced by Aboriginal people,  worked through grass roots organisations as well as with government. 
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• He gathered evidence in to press for an enquiry into the New South Wales Aborigines' Protection Board.
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• In 1950_ he revived the Aborigines Progressive Association, which had become inactive after Ferguson's death, and encouraged Aboriginal people to join. This organisation promoted Aboriginal control of their own affairs.
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• In  the 1958_ He argued that assimilation implied the disappearance of Aboriginal people as a separate cultural group and their physical absorption into European Australia. Speaking for the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, Groves told the conference that the word 'integration' better defined the aims of his organisation.
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• In the 1960s _Bert Groves was also president of the Aborigines Progressive Association  and executive member of the Aboriginal Children's Advancement Society.

THE TURNING POINT

     In 1923 _ Bert Groves worked as a horse scoop on the construction of the dubbo to werris creek railway for a while.

     In 1945 _ He joined  in the AAF.

      In    the late 1945s_  he settled down in Sydney .

    on 7 June 1969 _    At Tranby Chapel, Glebe,  Groves married 21-year-old, German-born Renate Sofia Schieron


on 28 December 1970_    he died of myocardial infarction in Bankstown hospital and was buried with Methodist forms in Woronora cemetery.