Leeanne Enoch, the first Aboriginal woman elected to Queensland parliament, has vowed to floodlight the path first set by her famous forebear, Aunty Kath Walker.
A former high school teacher and indigenous policy adviser, Ms Enoch made history this weekend by winning her Brisbane seat of Algester as Labor stunned the Liberal National Party at the state election.
She joins north Queenslander Billy Gordon, who took the seat of Cook, as Queensland Labor's first indigenous parliamentarians and the first in the state in 41 years.
"It's almost overwhelming, it's incredible - an incredible feeling," Ms Enoch said.
"Who would have ever thought three years ago we (Labor) would be in this position?"
In 2012, Labor was reduced to just seven MPs.
At the time, Ms Enoch - preselected for the Gold Coast seat of Coomera - was national head of Red Cross's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island programs.
She said it was the slashing of funding to community organisations which triggered her decision to follow in the footsteps of her "Aunty Kath" - pioneering activist and poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
"We're from the same people, the same nation (Nunukul-Nughi), and she was the first Aboriginal woman to run as a Labor candidate after the 1967 referendum," Ms Enoch said.
"She set a beacon on the path where you could go `that path is lit up, I wonder what's down there?'
"When you have people like that in your life it's something that sits in the back of your mind, the back of your conversations and decisions in what you end up doing in your life.
"One of the things we saw in Queensland was the stripping away of a lot of funding for community organisations which really gutted some of our communities and that was the final straw so I put up my hand."
Ms Enoch, who paid credit to her passionate volunteers, said the onus was on her and Mr Gordon to transform the excitement of their success to a lasting legacy.
"Forty years it's been since we've seen an Aboriginal person in parliament and that was Uncle Eric Deeral and he was there for one term and that was it," she said.
"My job and Billy's job is just to put the floodlight on the path - to say this is possible."
