Working With the Aboriginals of the Cape York Peninsula

On the Pennefather, Cape York Peninsula, Australia

This article, and future articles, will share some of my various trips to Australia to work with, and assist, various Aboriginal tribes in the Cape York Peninsula.

Terry Graham, a white man, is one of a handful of people that are welcomed as an outside expert on construction and infrastructure by a number of tribes in the Cape. Terry has spent a great deal of his life working and interacting with various Aboriginal groups around the Cape. He is known and trusted, so it is natural the tribes turn to him when making significant plans and changes. It is also widely known that Terry is an expert on the historic and cultural histories of the Cape York Peninsula and is one of few allowed a limited access to the inner circles involving decision making for a tribe.

As an aside, Terry headed up the Australian relief construction team to Dili, East Timor, when the Indonesians pulled out leaving chaos behind them. He has also done relief work in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia (post tsunami) Vietnam and other hot spots throughout the world. We have a long history together in various challenging places at challenging times.

Terry led a group of us to assist the Mapoon people located on the northeastern part of the Cape. They are located north of Weipa, a wild and wooly bauxite town loaded with adventurous people living similar to the Klondike days. The journey to their land involves a lot of slow four wheel driving through swamps, sand and scrub. As the northern part of the Cape York Peninsula offers some of the finest fishing in the world many residents of Weipa, and elsewhere, would like to enter and stay in the pristine paradise. The Mapoon control all of this area requiring a permit giving travel permission to outsiders.

The Mapoon people, and other peoples of Australia, have been the victims of discrimination similar to the history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It’s shocking how the Rufus River Incident, in Australia, is so similar to the event at Wounded Knee, in the States, that killed so many. The Aboriginals have only recently recovered their children and had their land returned to their sole control. Since “the return” and their governance of their land they found it beneficial to form various Corporation of Peoples (term tribe is inaccurate) to help with infrastructure and management of their land (countries). Various Australian organizations have spent years attempting to make life a bit better for the Aboriginal after so many years of destructive treatment by a succession of governments.

These people have a number of significant challenges that can be assisted by income generated by the adventure needs and desires of the roustabouts in Weipa who want to visit the area for fishing and camping.

Unfortunately, many of the Mapoon’s young people have lost a bit of their connection to their heritage and land. Many of the young are affected by addictions to petrel sniffing, a brain destroying habit, as well as to grog and all the problems brought by that involvement. The tribe is attempting to draw their youth back into their country to get them away from petrel and grog and to teach them the ways that have existed for perhaps 40,000 years.

The plan when we arrived was to help construct a gravity water system from the bush to the beach waterline in order to allow tourists some comforts. The scheme called for constructing a number of showers and dunnies. The Mapoon would allow in tourists charging a fair price for camping with limited amenities.

Balkanu, Cape York Development Corporation, Terry Graham, Australian Rotary, and volunteers such as myself had agreed to help them with this construction and other ventures.

We anticipated working with about forty tribe members. When we arrived, after hours of grueling driving, we were told most of the tribe was off on a “Stone Ceremony’ to commemorate a member who had died a year ago. “No worries.” This was almost predictable, according to Terry, as our schedules in no way exist on their timetables. If something more important comes up that is what drives the day. That this plan had been talked about for months didn’t affect the situation. That four five thousand gallon tanks with miles of pipe had been shuttled from Cairns days before our arrival didn’t slow anyone down when their plan was to go to ceremony. We would have to make do.

Two of our group were master plumbers/electricians who came along to train some of the young people on how to set up and maintain the systems, pumps and generators. That there were going to six of us, and a dozen of them, was the situation we faced as we kicked around how to accomplish all the work within a fortnight. No one had any idea on when the majority of the tribe would return.

Future articles will share how all this came together with all the challenges that were presented to us upon arrival.