John Richard Stuart was about 10 years old when he started working on cattle stations in the Northern Territory.
Just a boy at the time, he remembers working from sunrise to sundown, seven days a week.
For the better part of a decade, Mr Stuart worked on the one station.
He said his employer told him they were putting his money in a bank account and promised to leave him property when they died, but neither of those things happened.
"[They] never banked any money or gave us any money in those days," he said.
In his younger years, Mr Stuart worked across nine stations, but he said he was not paid properly for his labour on most of them.
He isn't certain how many years he worked for a pittance, but estimates it may have been decades.
"I reckon it's bloody shocking," Mr Stuart said.
"I've been robbed very badly over those years.
"A lot of places, I've never been paid for a lot of things I've done."
Class action for missing wages filed in 2021
Now in his 80s, Mr Stuart is hoping to scrape back some of his hard-earned wages.
He has signed up to a class action led by Shine Lawyers which, if successful, will compensate Indigenous people for unpaid work in the NT throughout the 20th century.
The class action against the Commonwealth was filed in the Federal Court in June last year.
It was filed on behalf of First Nations people who worked in the territory between 1933 and 1971, many of whom held roles such as stockman, farmhand, laundry assistant and kitchen hand.
Shine Lawyers practice leader Tristan Gaven said about 1,000 people had already registered for the class action, but he estimated about 8,000 to 10,000 people could be eligible.
Until the 1970s, Indigenous Australians were governed under various "protection acts" which allowed Aboriginal people's wages to be withheld in trust by state and territory governments.
Some workers were not paid at all, Mr Gaven said, while others were paid in rations and board or given a small fraction of what was owed to them.
"It's incredible to think that you can do 20, 30 years doing effectively back-breaking labour and not get paid for it," he said.
"I thought that conditions akin to slavery were something that was totally foreign to Australia.
"To find out we basically had slavery as little as 50 years ago … is really disturbing."
Shine Lawyers is currently travelling across 68 remote NT communities to find affected workers.
Mr Gaven said it had been "challenging" work.
"With this case going right back to the early 1930s, obviously the majority of people who were working back then have since passed away," he said.
"We're conscious of the fact that we have a very old cohort.
"We're looking to resolve this as quickly as possible."
But Mr Gaven said for a case this complex it would take between two and three years between it being filed and the matter going to trial.
'A hard life but a good life'
For Mr Stuart in Alice Springs, the clock is ticking.
He has been diagnosed with cancer and wants to see justice while he's still alive.
"It would be really great to have this money before I'm gone," Mr Stuart said.
He said if the class action is successful, he would use the money to travel up to Darwin to see his family, and then share the rest with his children to make sure they were well looked after when his time came.
A spokeswoman for Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt said the Commonwealth recognised and respected any person's right to take legal action against them if they felt they had "suffered a loss or damages due to the actions of the government".
"The parties are currently working through the court-ordered discovery of documents which involves claims going back to 1933 and so it is too early to assess the extent of the claim," the spokeswoman said.
She said the government would comply with all the court's directions on how to proceed with the discovery process.
"As the matter is before the court, it would be inappropriate to comment further," the spokeswoman said.
Despite the hard years of labour, Mr Stuart is not bitter, and he still looks back fondly on his years on the stations.
