Gavin Wanganeen

Gavin Wanganeen is a former Australian rules footballer and, after retirement, artist who played for the Essendon Football Club and the Port Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League. Born on 18 June 1973 in Mount Gambier to a Kokatha family, he grew up in Salisbury, a northern suburb of Adelaide, and joined the Port Adelaide Under-17s side in the SANFL at 14. At Essendon he won the first of his five All-Australian selections and the 1993 Brownlow Medal at the age of 20, the youngest winner since 1936 and the first Indigenous Australian footballer to win it, in the year of the Baby Bombers premiership. He was Port Adelaide's inaugural captain on entry to the AFL in 1997 and became the first Indigenous Australian to reach 300 senior games. He is an Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee and now paints, exploring his Kokatha identity.