Met on Adelaide's Streets, Sang Together for Decades

Ruby Hunter was an Aboriginal singer and songwriter from South Australia. When she was eight years old she was taken from her family, part of the removal of Indigenous children that is now known as the Stolen Generations. By her teens she was living on the streets of Adelaide, without a family home to return to.

It was in those years that she met Archie Roach, who was also homeless at the time. SBS reported that Roach, as a young teenager, travelled around the country and spent time without a home in both Sydney and Adelaide. She was about 15 and he was 16 when they became a couple, and they stayed together for almost forty years.

Their life together was built around music. In the 1980s they formed a band with other Indigenous Australians called the Altogethers. Hunter was the first person to hear Roach's new songs, and he called her his sounding board. After a concert in 1989 she encouraged him to record, and that led to his debut album, Charcoal Lane. She also performed on his 1993 album Jamu Dreaming and made her own recordings, including Ruby, and Ruby's Story with the Art Orchestra.

The couple had two sons, and they fostered and raised an extended family of children who had no homes of their own. Their music took them across Australia and overseas. Ruby Hunter died suddenly of a heart attack in February 2010, at the age of 54. Archie Roach has spoken about how hard her loss was for him, calling her his music match and the partner of his life.