URBAN BUSHLAND COUNCIL SEMINAR

17 SEPTEMBER, 2004

MUNDAY SWAMP AND PERTH AIRPORT LAND

ROBERT BROPHO,
NYUNGAH ELDER AND SPOKESPERSON
FOR TRADITIONAL OWNERS OF THE LAND


I’m here this morning to talk about us Blackfellas’ Values which we don’t get the opportunity to speak on these issues.

Munday Swamp is a Place of Importance to us Blackfellas. We’ve been in contact with that Land, that Area, that Swamp long before the international airport was put there.

We lived there in the Area. I roamed in that Bush with my Father, learning about the Spiritual Dreaming. It was an area of many Aboriginal people living there. It was a native reserve then, the South Guildford Reserve, The running of the Water then was beautiful, powerful and it was running its own course. The Bushland was full of Curly Banksia, Stinkwood, Smooth Banksia,Wattles, Paperbarks, Jarrah, Redgum, and it was full of all the other indigenous plants. There was birdlife, goannas, kangaroos, possums, many other little creatures. There were turtles that lived in Munday Swamp and they are still there and the Spiritual Dreaming. It was full of Life.

Munday Swamp was a noted Place of Gathering for Aboriginal People – not just my Time and my Father’s Time. The Place is scattered with quartz stones of Aboriginal Ancestors. Archeologists say it is the richest archeological site in the whole of the south-west. The Pads of the Aboriginal Ancestors and Spiritual Beings come down from Mundaring Weir and down the Helena Valley and down the Helena River and to all the Wetlands and Munday Swamp.

It was used in Eden Hill Camps Days long before whitefella housing was built there. All the Old People are dead now.

It is a shame when I heard the Minister say just now that a Memorandum of Understanding took place which we were not part of.


Over millions of years the landscape was designed by Nature. But now it is not just Munday Swamp – there is a big spread statewide of destruction where Land and Culture are being destroyed for mineral sands, iron ore, gas, gold, silver, nickel. It is going every day of the year, destroying the Environment and destroying what belongs to us by international law – our Holy Places, our Spiritual Beliefs, our Ceremonial Grounds, our Schoolrooms, our Universities, our Libraries, our Culture, our Bible, our connection to the Land and to each other. What we, the Blackfellas, are saying is when is it going to stop? If it doesn’t slow down Nature’s Gift – plants and animals that dwell won’t have a fighting chance because us, the humans, forever speeding into the future, want to build things and destroy things.

The same thing is happening with the Tuart Forest in the Busselton area – Blackfellas have had no chance to explain the Deeper Hurt. What the mining company with the permission of the WA Government will be doing is stir up the Bones and the Blood of our Ancestors. There used to be excursions of whites hunting through the bush through the Area, the whites had sports of killing out Blacks in the area of the Tuart Forest, the Wonnerup massacres. It is not just Old Tuart Trees. Those Tuarts are the monuments protecting all our Sacredness. People like us do not have the chance to explain to the Government how deep it is going into our Mother’s guts.

Then we switch course and we worry about the Windarling/Mt Jackson Area northeast of Southern Cross. The beautiful mountains of the Sacredness of the Seven Sisters and all the things that dwell therein is being destroyed right now by mining for iron ore. The mining is levelling all the Hills and taking it all away to China. We the Blackfellas can still hear the Seven Sisters Spiritual Dreaming crying for protection and for the Ranges not to be destroyed, and also the Two Man Dreaming at Mt Jackson, Sacred Men’s Law, that connects all over the continent – being destroyed for ever.(See www.respectsacredland).

We mustn’t forget the Burrup – the oldest Rock Art in the World which is going to all be damaged and destroyed. The Oldness is not recognised and the importance of saving and preserving this Oldness is not recognised.

And we musn’t forget Yackabindie and the Sacredness of of the Dragonfly and Carpet Snake Dreaming in the huge valley of Jones Creek and the Barr-Smith Ranges, the Path of Fearful Flight, south of Wiluna, that Western Mining is damaging in the present moment for nickel, where the Blackfellas have been standing all those years to protect their Beliefs and Culture and History, a whole huge chapter in our Bible.

And in our area is Wright Lake. This year we the Grassroots Elders stood there and watched the bulldozers and trucks going down deeper and deeper into the centre of Wright Lake and