Embrey lived most of his adult life at Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement, where he died and was buried in the old cemetery in 1939. His immediate descendants today are the children of Penny Bond (nee Embrey), the only child of Dennis ‘Dinny’ Embrey, who died at Cherbourg in 1934. Dinny was the only son of Fred and his wife Sylvia Embrey (nee Cobbo). Penny’s children are Sylvia Bond, Margaret Bond, Alex Bond and Beverly Hand; they refer to their great-grandfather as Whardin, Yabba or Yabva. 
 

‘King Freddie’

As a key figure and ‘king’ at Cherbourg, Fred Embrey was at the forefront when distinguished guests or government officials visited, including being amongst the official party to welcome the Duke of Gloucester to Cherbourg in 1934. In August 1938, a newspaper reported how the Minister for Health and Home Affairs, Mr EM Hanlon ‘[a]fter watching the events and meeting leading citizens . . . had time for a chat with Fred Embrey, the king of Mt Mia Station Blacks’.³

Bestowing Aboriginal men with breastplates was a practice instigated by early European settlers to give status to ‘cooperative’ individuals, regardless of their status within their own community. Aboriginal society never had ‘kings’; this convention was imposed upon Aboriginal people by settlers. Fred Embrey was given this breastplate in recognition of his strong traditional connections to the Country in the region of Mt Mia Station near Kilkivan, yet the Country that Embrey was associated with was much broader than this. 

No records have been located as to the circumstances surrounding its presentation, but it is held by Embrey’s descendants. Brisbane radio and television personality Jamie Dunn, who returned the breastplate to the family in 2012, had purchased it breastplate at Rita Rainbow’s Marcoola antique shop on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.