Cover story

The man from blue Mudbay

Respect was what the Blue Mud Bay case was all about, and the man behind that effort is Djambawa Marawili, internationally renowned artist, Madarrpa clan leader, and interface between non-Aboriginal people and the Yolngu people of East Arnhem Land. He is a man immersed in his culture, painting and sculpting the stories of his traditional homeland along the waters of the massive Blue Mud Bay, three hours drive south of Nhulunbuy. His works on bark and hollow logs are exhibited in most state galleries and many overseas collections, and it was art that he used to make his people’s case for sea rights.

Marawili was already a well established artist and board chairman of the Buku-Larrngay Mulka art centre at Yirrkala when the sea rights issue came to a head. Marawili and his people believed that the professional barramundi fishermen and crabbers that frequented the East Arnhem coast should ask permission to fish there, just as the Yolgnu people do as a matter of respect. No such application was made, before an incident occurred that drove the clan into action.

In 1996, the year Marawili won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for bark painting, an abandoned fishing camp was discovered on the Bay in a sacred site. The site had been desecrated with rubbish and the severed head of a crocodile, the totem associated with that site, was also discovered. Something had to be done. It was decided that the regional traditional owners would launch an application to the Federal Court for recognition of their sea rights. “I went around to every clan along the coast and inland. So we started doing our claim by making the art,” recalls Marawili. “The saltwater paintings had the stories of the sea in them. We wanted to put it in so other people, who don’t know this country, could see it was a sacred thing for us. A document. There is the painting. The stories. There is a songlines. There is dance.”

But depicting sacred stories in paintings to be viewed by the public caused great controversy among the clans. “People asked him, ‘why are you digging our minds? You’re going too deep. You’re going too far. We’ll have nothing left if we give this all away’,“ remembers Will Stubbs, Yirrkala art centre coordinator. “The paintings are the equivalent of deeds of ownership. But it is the intellectual property that’s the deed, not the object. Once you’ve lost the sole ownership of the intellectual property, you’ve lost the deed. This is the tension he faced and overcame.”

Marawili knew he had to disguise the sacred stories so the painter created figurative imagery out of the sacred design and buried the sacred designs in the water, which was an innovation in modern Yolgnu art. Today young Yolgnu artists use some of the techniques he developed because ‘if Djambawa can do it, anyone can do it’.

The Saltwater Collection was shown to Federal Court judges who visited Yilpara and was used in court. The court initially ruled against the Yolgnu, but Marawili refused to drop the case and convinced the NLC to make an appeal. In 2008, the Yolgnu were awarded exclusive rights over tidal waters along their land by the High Court and, by extension, all Aboriginal coastal land in the Territory, comprising 80 per cent of the Territory coastline.

But do they want to exclude all non-Aboriginal stakeholders? The NLC is about to find out. They are embarking on discussions to ascertain the views of traditional owners on how they wish to use their newly acquired sea rights. By year’s end a clear picture should emerge. “It’s all about the land. Finding sustainable ways for the people to stay on the land so they continue there,” explains Stubbs. “The Madarrpa have to stay there. They have to know that land, sing that land, express that land, and dance that land.”

Djambawa Marawili is now looking at new ways his people can derive income from their land. One way is tourism. A plan has been initiated by consultant Nicholas Hall that will see development of what he calls Two Way Education, whereby outsiders learn about Yolgnu culture and Yolgnu learn more about the world at large. “If you were in a foreign university and you really wanted to study Australian Indigenous culture—this is where you’d come,” says Hall. “It’s the best documented country in the region. In Yilpara, not only do you have a beautiful place, but it’s one we know so much about.”

Marawili likes the Two Way Education model as well, his people certain to learn skills. “We want to start a little trial business in tourism,” he says. “We can show them how the blackfella can live off this country. How we catch food. How we use bush medicine. Then we can have jobs that we never had before.”

The bush connection

In a traditional celebration organised by Jacob Nayinggul, senior Erre traditional owner of the East Alligator River crossing area, Aboriginal male dancers leaped in unison, the lead dancer grasping a length of fibre optic cable. It was the cable they came to honour. Just completed in a $34 million joint venture between Telstra, the Territory Government and Rio Tinto Alcan, installation of 800 km of this cable will deliver high-speed broadband to nine communities between nearby Jabiru and across rugged Arnhem Land to Nhulunbuy.

The broadband will result in improved health care and educational opportunities for the 10 000 people scattered through the remote region. “This is a superb example of how government and enterprise can work together to deliver such needed benefits in these parts of Australia,” says Geoff Booth, managing director of Telstra Countrywide. “We’ve tapped into a spirit of cooperation.”

The “backbone cable” was laid before Christmas, with spur lines connecting remote outstations to be completed this year. Aboriginal people in the area had been closely involved in consultations over the cable route and installation, which construction crews raced to complete before the onset of the wet season. “Telstra had very close communication with us,” said Nayinggul. “They worked hard to avoid some [sacred] sites. I call that respect.”

The project consisted of two distinct phases: the first, physically getting optic fibre in the ground between Jabiru and Nhulunbuy. Once that was completed, transmission equipment was placed on the fibre that actually pumps the digital signal via light through lasers to carry the information. Power was added to make that operational. Phase two will be completed in the upcoming dry season (May to September 2009) when spur lines will connect more remote communities to the backbone cable.

“Telstra had very close communication with us. They worked hard to avoid some [sacred] sites. I call that respect.”

A major consideration for the construction team was trying to understand the concerns of the various Aboriginal groups that lived along the way. Basically, the route followed the existing road but sacred site avoidance issues still arose. “If that happened we altered the route in consultation with the local inhabitants,” recalls John Gibbs, Telstra’s executive director of network construction.

“We put in lots more cable to go around an area or we went ‘under-bore’, which meant we brought in underground rock boring machines and bored a hole underneath a significant area, so we could pull cable through and the area of significance was left undisturbed.” One such under-bore sent the cable beneath the tidal East Alligator River to the other side.

The team consisted of multiple crews operating simultaneously. They had three ripping crews working ahead of six plough crews that actually laid the cable at multiple points along the route. The disturbed ground was then levelled for natural rehabilitation. All heavy equipment was washed down regularly to prevent the spread of introduced weeds.

Crews moved in heavy equipment in an effort to complete the major cable installation before the onset of seasonal rains, but their late start meant they were working in mega-humid 40 degree weather. For a company that had laid optic fibre across the Nullarbor and to the tip of Cape York, the conditions they operated under during the Arnhem Land ‘build-up’ season were the harshest they had ever encountered in Australia. The oppressive heat forced organisers to allow for their 150 staff to drink 10 litres of bottled water a day each.

High temperatures coupled with the removal of massive subterranean rocks took their toll, but crews finished on schedule in late November. For people along the route it will mean they will have far more reliable communications than they had previously. Their current communications through radio systems operated on towers and dishes, susceptible to the elements. “I look forward to the next time a cyclone tries to disrupt communications in this part of the world, because it won’t happen,” states Booth. “People in this part of Australia can look forward to minimal disruptions with fibre buried 4m below rivers.”

They will have a system with 10 times the capacity of the existing system, now offering services previously only experienced in capital cities. Police, education and health departments can now utilise high speed broadband to improve their services to the communities. For instance, an X-ray can be taken at a community clinic and doctors at a capital city hospital can offer advice on what they see, or communities can use video conferencing with other parts of Australia. “Cable of this nature is a once in a lifetime exercise,” says Gibbs. “The people in these communities and their children will be reaping the benefits of this technology for generations to come.”

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