Auriel Andrew, Australian country musician, Died at 69

Auriel Andrew was born in 1947, in Darwin and died on January 2, 2017.

She was an Indigenous Australian country musician of the Arrernte people of Central Australia.

Andrew grew up in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, leaving for Adelaide, South Australia aged 21 to pursue her music career.

She came from the Arrernte people in Alice Springs.

Auriel skin name was Mbitjana and her totem was the hairy caterpillar (Ayepe-arenye).

She was the youngest of seven children, she started singing at the age of four, and began her professional career in the late 1960s working with Chad Morgan in the Adelaide and Port Lincoln areas, and appeared on live TV music broadcasts, including shows hosted by Roger Cardwell, Johnny Mack and Ernie Sigley, and then becoming a regular on Channel Nine’s Heather McKean & Reg Lindsey Show. In 1973, she moved to Sydney, and toured with Jimmy Little, performing at popular clubs and pubs around New South Wales.

Andrew has taught Aboriginal culture in classrooms for 20 years, passing on her knowledge in schools in Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales, and in 2016 joined the cast of the stage adaptation of Clinton Walker’s Buried Country, which made its premiere in her hometown of Newcastle on 20 August.

Auriel Andrew passed away at 69 years old.