[3] Munro was an avid advocate for Indigenous land rights throughout his life, interacting with prime ministers and other leaders, and addressed forums on the international stage.
At that time, Aboriginal people were not allowed in pubs or clubs or at the Moree swimming baths, or to walk on the sidewalk, or play football in the local team.
He got a lot of advice from the local elders in Moree, and realised that he could help his people attain the same rights as he enjoyed.
Munro told NITV in 2017 that he and the Moree Aboriginal Advancement Committee had been fighting to change the town's segregationist by-laws for years before the Freedom Riders arrived, but not in a confrontational way.
The event was widely covered by the media at home and internationally, and it caught the attention of the Australian public, proving to be a "seminal moment" in the history of Australia.
[7][2] With the Aboriginal Legal Service, Munro took part in rallies protesting the mining of asbestos by the James Hardie Company on the NSW North Coast[3][10] at Baryulgil.
[1][3] Around 650 people attended, and the crowd was addressed by his son Lyall Jnr and local member for the Northern Tablelands, Adam Marshall, who represented the Premier of New South Wales.
[10] His contribution to his local community, as well as causes relating to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, was wide-ranging and extraordinary.
[13] Their other children were: Lyall Jnr (born 1951[14]), Danile ("Dan"[9]), Keith, Julie, Selena, Jennifer, Lloyd (in 2021 vice-chair of the Moree Local Aboriginal Land Council[9]), Elizabeth, Andrew, William, and Alma.
[7] In 2002, Munro was a joint recipient of the National NAIDOC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Male Elders of the Year Award.
[17] Note that several sources with a summary biography say that Lyall Snr was a founding member of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC).
[4] However, there is no corroborating evidence in the more detailed sources that he was involved in the founding of AHC, and it is likely that there has been confusion with his son Lyall Jnr (who, with his wife Jenny Munro, was involved in the founding of the AHC[18][19][20])[a] There may also have been confusion with the NSW Aboriginal Housing Office, of which he was an inaugural member.
[2] Some sources say that he was involved in the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern,[4] but according to quite a comprehensive overview of the first 20 years of that organisation by Gary Foley, neither he nor Lyall Jnr is mentioned.