It has taken 150 years, but Cricket Australia and the Melbourne Cricket Club are finally honouring that near-forgotten period.

The Boxing Day test at the MCG this year between Pakistan and Australia will be dedicated to the memory of Australia's first Aboriginal cricketers, and numerous lead-up events will be held to declare that cricket is a sport for all Australians.

About time. Arsenic in flour, the gun, disease and starvation following the robbery by white settlers of ancient hunting grounds had done their dreadful work by the 1860s right across western Victoria.

Those indigenous survivors of white settlement who could not bear living on missions and grim reserves sought survival on the grazing properties that had sprawled across their country.

They were paid nothing, or not much more than rations, for their labour. But come summer, many of the men found a form of release from the misery that had been inflicted upon them.

The "blackfellas" of the Western District and the Wimmera were welcomed to the cricket pitch. White station owners, attached to the most British of games, were keen on finding any winning edge they could manage. If that meant having physically gifted black men on the team, so be it.

Men without a penny to their names were given bat, ball and flannels and permitted to play. Consider Johnny Mullagh. He had another name: Unaarrimin. It was from the language of his people, the Jardwadjali, who occupied the country north and east of The Grampians/Gariwerd.

Today's towns of Horsham, Coleraine, Harrow, Apsley and Donald cover that territory. Born in 1841 on a property named Mullagh not far from the village of Harrow, his traditional name was replaced – as if he were owned, heart and soul – with the surname of the property, though he worked much of his life on an adjoining spread, Pine Hills.

Others found themselves lumped with the surnames of white bosses. History may never have recorded Unaarrimin's life but for the fact that by the time he was in his 20s, Black Johnny Mullagh was considered among the finest all-round cricketers of the Western District, the Wimmera – and soon, the world.

It didn't mean he was granted the social status that ought to have accompanied such talent. There is a confronting story that during a game at the village of Apsley, near the Victorian-South Australian border, Mullagh's (white) captain was asked when players went to lunch: "what about the nigger?"

"Let him have his dinner in the kitchen; anything is good enough for the nigger," said the captain. Mullagh, a proud man, refused to eat in the kitchen and sat outside the pub in protest.

By the mid-1860s, the indigenous players of Western Victoria had earned quite a reputation.They came from three separate but neighbouring language groups: the Jardwadjali, the Djab wurrung, whose lands were to the west and south-east of Gariwerd (think of today's Ararat, Stawell and Hamilton) and the Gunditjmara people of the south (Portland, Port Fairy,Heywood, Condah, Framlingham, Macarthur).

They gained such a reputation that the gentlemen of the Melbourne Cricket Club thought a Boxing Day match between an MCC team and an Aboriginal team might draw a worthwhile paying crowd.

One of early Australia's most remarkable men, Tom Wills, agreed to coach the indigenous team from Western Victoria. He was a star cricketer himself, and is credited with codifying the first laws of Australian rules football.

Wills, having been raised in the Grampians and on a property near today's Ararat, spoke the language of the Djab wurrung. Five years before agreeing to coach the indigenous team, Wills had travelled to Queensland with his father, who with 17 other whites, was speared to death by Aborigines.

It remains astonishing that so soon after this tragedy, Wills was happy to lead a team of black cricketers. Perhaps he needed the money – he was a soak, suffering post traumatic stress (though no one had heard of it then).

Word of the strength and skill of the team Wills assembled and trained at Lake Wallace, Edenhope, alarmed the men of the MCC, who began roping in top players from outside their club.

Melbourne's crowd decided that just wasn't cricket, and support swung towards the indigenous team when the game was played on Boxing Day,1866. More than 10,000 people turned up. It was a huge success, though Wills' black team was defeated.

Many of the Aboriginal players went on to form the first organised Australian team to tour England, in 1868.

By then, Unaarrimin/Mullagh was captain, and Wills was no longer coach.The indigenous team played 47 matches in England, won 14, lost 14 and drew 19, to the shock of English commentators, who had initially laughed at these black Australians.

Mullagh scored 1698 runs and took 245 wickets.The others were: Bullocky (traditional name: Bullchanach), Sundown (Ballrin), Dick-a-Dick (Jungunjinanuke), Johnny Cuzens (Zellanach), King Cole (Bripumyarrimin, who died of tuberculosis in England), RedCap (Brimbunyah), Twopenny (Murrumgunarriman), Charley Dumas (Pripumuarraman), Jimmy Mosquito (Grougarrong, Tiger (Boninbarngeet) Peter (Arrahmuniarrimun), and Jim Crow (Jallachniurrimin).

They are immortalised in the Johnny Mullagh Interpretive Centre,within a splendid museum in the village of Harrow in their own country.

But what happened to Unaarrimin, the great Johnny Mullagh? He played for a period as a professional with the MCC and in 1837 top-scored while playing (at 10th spot) with Victoria against England.

He endured increasing obscurity in later life, living in his old rabbiter's hut not far from the museum that bears his name. He died a day after his 50th birthday, August 14, 1891. He is buried in the Harrow cemetery, and his grave is a place now of pilgrimage for cricketers.

It is not before time, clearly, that Cricket Australia honour these pioneering men, 150 years on, with another Boxing Day match in the cause of welcoming today's indigenous players into the heart of the game that, in many ways, was once their own.