Eric Paul Willmot AM, (31 January 1936 – 20 April 2019) was an Australian scholar, educator, writer, and engineer.
[4] He was educated first at various Queensland schools, then obtained his BSc and DipEd at the University of Newcastle, in New South Wales.
[4] He spent a lot of time in his shed working on his inventions, but few ever made it to market as (in the words of his daughter, Haidi), he "was not a businessman".
[5] Willmot became an early example in Australia of a non-aboriginal person identifying as indigenous, when after spending time in Papua New Guinea, he claimed to possess such ancestry.
Two of his sisters, Mary and Christine, attempted to privately dissuade him from doing so; the latter ultimately writing to a newspaper to state: "extensive genealogical research has failed to suggest any aboriginal connections, and discussion among near and distant family members has failed to turn up any oral history which would give rise to Eric's claim...We recognise that Eric has done a lot of good things in the field of aboriginal education, but we feel it is wrong and unnecessary (and ultimately harmful to the Aborigines' cause) to falsify his heritage to it.