Australian cricket is mourning the death of Aunty Faith Thomas, the first Aboriginal woman to play Test cricket for Australia, who passed away at the weekend aged 90. Thomas (nee Coulthard) played her groundbreaking Test for Australia against England at Melbourne’s Junction Oval in February 1958, when she became the first Indigenous woman to represent an Australian sports team.
Thomas was awarded the Order of Australia in 2019 for her services to cricket and her dedication to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in a long nursing career. Retrospectively awarded a baggy green cap as the 48th Australian woman to play Test cricket, Thomas is honoured every year by the Adelaide Strikers playing for the Faith Thomas Trophy in the WBBL. Her legacy also lives on in Adelaide Oval’s Avenue of Honour as a great of the game.
“Faith Thomas made a wonderful and groundbreaking contribution to cricket and the community,” Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley said. “As the first Aboriginal woman to represent Australia in Test cricket, Faith was an inspiration to those who have followed and she leaves an indelible mark on the game.”
Born in 1933 in Nepabunna, Thomas was born Tinnipha, the daughter of an Adnyamathanha mother and German father. As Faith Coulthard, she was brought by her mother to Colebrook Home in Quorn in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges where she began playing improvised cricket on dirt roads using a homemade bat and a rock if there was no ball.
A fast bowler, Thomas joked that her fearsome speed was the result of “chucking stones at galahs”, but only in her late teens did she learn women played organised cricket. Thomas was invited to participate in a club game in Adelaide and the power she generated from just a few paces of run-up made her an immediate star. In her first season with Windsor she took a hat trick and 6/20, and in one famous game against Adelaide Teachers College returned the remarkable figures of six wickets for no runs.
After just three club matches, Thomas was selected to represent South Australia and then chosen in a side to play the touring English team in a warmup game in Brisbane. There, a legend was born. Thomas bowled a delivery to dismiss English captain Mary Duggan that was so fast the middle stump was sent cartwheeling and Duggan sat on the pitch laughing at her helplessness against the pace.
The following year, in 1958, Thomas made her Test debut. The Sydney Test was washed out and in Melbourne she was bowled sparingly. After carrying the drinks in Adelaide her career quietly ended. Although chosen to tour England and New Zealand, Thomas was a desert woman uncomfortable at sea so baulked at the overseas tour.
Instead, she went to the docks to wave off the team and dedicated herself to a nursing career. As a girl at Colebrook, Thomas had been inspired by two caring woman she called Sister Hyde and Sister Rutter. “Those two women trying to look after all those little blackfellas, I don’t know how they didn’t go mad,” she later recalled. “I used to think things just happened or were coincidence but now I look back, I’ve seen a lot of miracles.”
In the early 1950s Thomas was among the first group of Indigenous nurses trained at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and became the first State Public Servant with Aboriginal heritage. As one of the inaugural Indigenous college graduates in the country, Thomas took her skills to Raukkan at the top of the Coorong to work with the Ngarrindjeri mob. She married Bernard Thomas and had a family as her nursing work took her back north where she toiled in remote areas and communities, driving an old Land Rover with a shotgun for company and having a profound impact on thousands of patients who hailed her an inspiring advocate for positive change.
“Faith Thomas’s story is as inspiring as it is incredible,” SACA President William Rayner said. “A leader across medicine, sport, reconciliation and so much more, Aunty Faith created footprints that others have had the opportunity to follow in the decades since. A brilliantly unique and successful cricketer, Aunty Faith’s journey was never simply about personal achievement – instead she always sought ways to improve the lives of others.”
Thomas herself believed her extraordinary life was possible because the only word banned at Colebrook was “can’t”.
“I remember when we were nursing you would see a job advertisement for a double certificate nurse, and you would apply, and the job would go to a single certificate white nursing sister,” she reflected. “Sister Hyde would say that’s a door not meant to open so knock on another one. It was a faith instilled in us - don’t ever give up.”
