"From Cairns to Madrid:" The first female Australian Indigenous ambassador goes to Spain

"Julie-Ann Guivarra was the first in her family to go to university. She was the first Indigenous person to serve as a senior executive in the Australian Foreign Ministry. 

Last year, she became the first Indigenous woman to represent Australia as its highest-ranking diplomat in Spain.

“Certainly I’ve never set out necessarily in life to be a trailblazer, but I do think that being the first Indigenous female ambassador is a huge honor. It’s an honor for myself, you know, I know that my family back in Australia are very proud of this achievement."

Ms Guivarra was posted to Spain, the country where her Basque surname originated. Ms Guivarra's Spanish connection dates back to one of her great-grandfathers, of Indigenous and Filipino origin: a combination not all that unusual, given the ancient maritime trade routes between Asia, Europe and Oceania reached the Torres Strait islands."

"My last name is Spanish because my great-grandparents were from the Philippine islands. It was only when I got this position that I started learning the language," the ambassador explains.

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