The problem with playing golf in the desert

On secondment with the Goldfields Land & Sea Council, JEREMY DICKER found a community facing the future with greater hope The mine Deep in Western Australia’s desert, on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, is a wire fence. On one side of this fence is one of the world’s largest open-pit gold mines, the SuperPit. Its sheer size is staggering, completely smothering the richest square mile of auriferous country on earth. The CAT trucks hauling the ore out of the ground look like matchbox cars from the mine’s edge, yet you can’t help but gawk at them like a school kid in a zoo. This mine operates 24 hours a day, and digs up around two million dollars of gold each day. The blokes (or, increasingly, women) in the driver seat of one of these CAT trucks can each earn up to $110,000 a year. In short, it’s a wealthy corner of the globe. On the other side of the fence is a place called “Boulder Camp.” The term “camp” is a bit generous, as it’s really just a red patch of desert littered with old rubber tires and crude shelters made out of corrugated iron. When the wind blows you need to squint to keep the dust out of your eyes, and when it stops, your ears buzz with the sound of heavy machinery over the fence. This is where people live, generally the “desert mob,” the name given to Aboriginals who have moved closer to town in order to find food or, quite often, to attend relatives’ funerals. The body of a 24 year old woman was found there in March of this year. And, in between, lies that wire fence *** What is it that separates Aboriginal Australians from the overwhelming wealth of their own country? What is it that keeps them in the shadow of the mines, rather than in the head office? Such questions generally draw a battle-weary sigh from Kalgoorlie’s local lawyers and policy makers. According to local barrister Philip Vincent, the problem is largely a historical one. “It’s Australia’s tendency to exclude its Aboriginal people from an entire network of relationships.” Vincent, a Kalgoorlie-based barrister, has had decades of experience as a lawyer in Aboriginal affairs, whether working as an Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) lawyer on the infamous “circuit,” acting for claimants in some of Australia’s largest native title hearings, or working as an advisor to Australia’s first Aboriginal cabinet minister. Slowly sipping his beer, staring at some unknown point on the wall behind me, his tired eyes betrayed the sense of frustration behind his otherwise soft-spoken demeanour. “It’s a tough situation. But it’s certainly not derived from any sense of unworthiness on their part. I’ve proofed dozens and dozens of witnesses at Native Title trials over the years and what has emerged is a tremendous narrative of Aboriginal employment in the region. They’ve built railroads, mines, roads not to mention those who have emerged as top educators and health professionals. Frankly, it’s quite impressive.” Much of Vincent’s recent work has been with the Goldfields Land and Sea Council (GLSC), an Aboriginal corporation which represents Aboriginal interests across a huge swath of Western Australia, bigger than Texas, England or the state of Victoria. It stretches from the southern edge of the Great Central Desert all the way to Esperance on Australia’s southern coast, and then seaward to the edge of Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Almost 20 per cent of the more than $53 billion in mineral and energy wealth produced in Western Australia each year is extracted from these lands, mostly in nickel and gold mining. Leo Thomas, a project officer with the GLSC and a respected leader within the local Wongatha Aboriginal community, recalls the many days that he spent trying to find a job for his son. “My boy had been looking for a job for a while, but no one would hire him. No one would give a black fella a chance,” he said. “So eventually, I drove down to a mine where I knew the manager, and I begged him begged him to give my boy a chance, just to be treated like everyone else.” The manager reluctantly agreed and, like many mine managers in the region, has since gone on to become actively involved in Aboriginal affairs in the region. As for Leo’s son, he’s never looked back. Trevor Donaldson, operations manager for the GLSC and another respected Aboriginal leader, remembers the repeated bouts of rejection that marked his own long and arduous search for a job. “The employment office would tell me about an apprenticeship being offered downtown, so I’d ring up, arrange an interview and head over there in my best clothes. But the man in the front office would just see a black fella approaching, and would shout out, ‘Sorry, no jobs here,’ and I’d go through the same thing over and over again. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a pastoralist’s house out of town that my chance came. They were an old Christian couple, and they gave me my first job.” The jail Unfortunately, not all Aboriginal people in the Goldfields have had the luck or persistence of Trevor Donaldson or Leo Thomas. A visit to Boulder Prison makes this clear. As one Wongatha man put it, “If someone were to visit Australia for the first time and see all the black fellas behind bars, they’d think there was a civil war happening.” Boulder Prison, like many of Australia’s prisons, is populated predominantly by young Aboriginal males. It sits on the outskirts of town just a short drive from Boulder Camp, and, like everything else in Kalgoorlie, it’s covered in a layer of red dust. Approaching the security booth at the main gates, you can hear the muffled shouts of some untold struggle inside. The old guard doesn’t seem to notice. Murray Stubbs, a court officer with the ALS and a Wongatha man, has visited this prison countless times. “I’ve done this job for about 16 years all up, and nothing much has changed for the black fella. Jailtime, grog and unemployment are still destroying my people.” We sat in a small concrete cell to interview some of the inmates awaiting trial, generally for driving offences and minor assaults. The same shouts that we heard from outside were now uncomfortably close, echoing down the halls around us. A young black fella, probably no older than I am (24) walked in. He looked decidedly scared, and confused as to why a “Wongi” (black fella) and “Walypala” (white fella, pronounced wull-buh-luh) had come to see him. Stubbs commenced the interview, in a language I couldn’t understand, before pointing to me: “This Walypala here to see how the Walypala law treats Wongi different to Walypala. He from Sydney. You know Sydney?” The young bloke maintained his blank expression, shaking his head slowly. Stubbs continued, pointing eastward out a barred window: “Sydney is big Walypala place beyond the desert that way.” The young bloke shrugged his shoulders and the interview continued, as I sat bewildered. It turned out that he was awaiting trial for driving without a license, and should have been at home on bail but had somehow slipped through the system’s cracks. He broke into a smile when we told him he’d be home next week. One after another, young blokes trudged into our interview room, with similar melancholy stories to tell, always in a language I couldn’t understand. As the afternoon wore on, the sun began to project fluid hues of orange and purple onto the wall beside us. The dark mood was broken only once, when a young bloke laughed at Stubbs’ remark that this was his twentieth arrest for driving without a license. Twentieth. Walking out of that prison, Stubbs didn’t need to say anything. That afternoon had spoken very clearly for itself. The golf course A quick drive from Boulder Prison is Piccadilly Street in Kalgoorlie, and at the bottom of this street is a construction site. There, the finishing touches are being put on a 200 megalitre storm water harvesting dam to help irrigate the nation’s first “world-class desert golf course,” planned to open later this year after falling more than twelve months behind schedule. The dam, costing around $4 million in taxpayers’ money, is designed to collect storm water runoff which usually flows though to Hannan’s Lake. It’s one of the more tangible outcomes flowing from the WA government’s $10 million stake in the golf course, which also includes an adjacent $30 million luxury resort. It’s hard not to question the priorities of a state government, with a $2 billion budget surplus, that spends $4 million to build a dam for a golf course just a few miles from the kinds of conditions you’d expect to see in a World Vision commercial, and a stone’s throw away from several hundred young men behind bars who speak no English and have no hope. This is all part of what Philip Vincent calls the “remorselessness” of this country towards its original inhabitants. “It’s a remorselessness that has manifested itself as resistance at the highest level, especially in the native title arena.” The court room Although native title law was designed so that Aboriginal land rights could be proven and recognised in a federal court of law, a quick look at any recent native title decision in Western Australia is more likely to bring David and Goliath imagery to mind. In the 2007 Wongatha decision, in which Federal Court Justice Lindgren dismissed the Wongatha claim in the north eastern Goldfields, the list of respondents (or, more accurately, opponents) was several pages long, including both the state and Commonwealth governments with their enormous resources, and more than 30 mining companies each represented by the usual mega-firms that dot our city skylines. Vincent recalls looking across the court on the first day of proceedings and seeing the opposing teams of lawyers, several rows deep. The list of names representing the Wongatha applicants was decidedly shorter, and considerably humbler. They included blokes like Leo Thomas and Murray Stubbs, represented by the mighty GLSC and its small team of under-funded and over-worked lawyers. It was a small, albeit determined, David. But unlike the Biblical David, this one only scored a draw. Ultimately, Justice Lindgren called it a nil-all draw by dismissing the Wongatha claim altogether and declining to make a final determination in favour of either side. But if you were sitting in the boardroom of Wongatha House the following morning, you would have seen more than a collection of claimants frustrated by an adverse judicial decision. You would have seen several broken men sitting in silence. The Wongatha people first lodged a series of claims in the mid-1990s and, on the advice of the National Native Title Tribunal, spent years trying to bridge complex familial-politico gulfs in order to consolidate their multiple overlapping claims into one. They then endured 100 days in a Walypala courtroom and contributed much of the trial’s 17,000 pages of transcript giving evidence of their traditional ownership. The trial finished in 2005 and the Wongatha people waited a further two years for Justice Lindgren to write a 4000 paragraph judgment that effectively walked them back to square one. Out of a deeply held respect for the Wongatha people, His Honour was careful to include a compendium of life stories recalled by some 90 Aboriginal people on the witness stand, several of whom passed away before the judgment was handed down. Ultimately, however, His Honour held that, contrary to the tribunal’s advice a decade earlier, the multiple familial claims should not have been consolidated into one. It was, for the Wongatha people, a kick in the guts. The stand In terms of hope, this outcome was pretty desolate. But when it comes to desolate landscapes, the Wongatha people have always been survivors. While waiting for the judgement they decided to take a stand, albeit a largely symbolic one, in the form of “The Wongatha People’s Declaration”: We, the Wongatha people of the Goldfields region of Western Australia, declare that ownership of our traditional lands is a lasting reality for us. This is the land of our ancestors. It is our home and the place from which we take our culture and identity, our customs and languages. Neither we nor our ancestors have ever accepted that governments, their agents, or others could tell us how to run our affairs or how to live our lives. Throughout the centuries of colonization we have shown a willingness to share our country and to live in peace with the newcomers, and we will continue our struggle to live in unity, prosperity and coexistence. Settlement has brought many changes to our country and to our way of life, but it has not brought prosperity and opportunity to us. In this year we are taking control over our own future and are affirming our right as traditional owners of the Wongatha lands to negotiate with those who would use them for their own ends. These are universal human rights and the sovereign rights of the Wongatha people. The declaration was signed by ten Wongatha leaders, including Leo Thomas and Murray Stubbs. It served as a reminder to all the world that, regardless of Walypala law, the Wongatha people still know who they are, where they belong, and what is rightfully theirs. As one Wongatha man told me at the time, “We’ve been here for a while. It’s going to take more than a Walypala court decision to get rid of us.” The Community Court There’s a determined hope on the Walypala side also. Prominent author and magistrate Dr Kate Auty has, on the invitation of state attorney-general Jim McGinty, recently moved to Kalgoorlie to help establish a Community Court in the region. The court, similar to the one established by Dr Auty in Shepparton, Victoria, invites respected leaders from within the local Aboriginal communities to take part in the judicial process as “panelists.” The result, hopes Auty, will be a judicial process that can more effectively deal with repeat offenders and help young Aboriginal men and boys stay out of jail. “When I first arrived, I was seeing the same faces over and over again,” recounts Auty. “Young blokes with records a dozen pages long, listing 25 arrests for the same type of offence. I saw a guy whose license had been suspended for 99 years. That’s completely useless. He lives in the bush, he’s got no choice but to drive anyway.” But changing the system was never going to be easy. Bradley Mitchell, an Aboriginal employee in the Attorney General’s Department and one of Dr Auty’s key allies behind the Community Court, recalls that things were especially difficult on the Wongi side of things. “We had to arrange dozens of meetings with all of the different Aboriginal communities in town, who were initially pretty skeptical. Eventually it came down to several one-on-one meetings with leaders, trying to convince them that this was a good idea that would help Aboriginal people in the area.” Today these people are proud of the Community Court. “It’s the first time that Aboriginal people have been invited into the WA court process to play a role other than defendant.” A visit to the Community Court today is an eye-opening experience. Aboriginal panelists like Leo Thomas and Trevor Donaldson sit beside the Walypala magistrate and deliver an effective mix of fiery rebuke and warm encouragement to the often startled defendants. Court staff still talk about Donaldson’s angry reaction to a Wongi man who tried to argue that wife-bashing was part of his people’s tradition. “Don’t you dare bring that crap in here, mate.” On one morning, Leo Thomas was asked by magistrate Denis Temby to comment on the behaviour of a 16 year old defendant. Thomas shook his head in disappointment, “I knew your father mate. And I knew your grandfather too. And they were both great men, and I know that they would both be terribly ashamed to see you here today, in trouble for your stupid behaviour. We all know you’re better than this.” These words seemed to cut deeper than any Walypala legalese. The boy left the courtroom that day promising never to get in trouble again. Dr Auty and her Aboriginal colleagues are confident that he will probably keep his promise. The cops Things are changing at the street level also. Dr Auty is optimistic about the new breed of police officers rising through the ranks, citing Neil Gordon in remote Warburton as a particularly good example. She says a lingering skepticism towards white law has made the job of police in remote areas extremely difficult, with victims refusing to report crimes, or testify at trials. But gradually things have begun to change. Auty knew a turning point had come when several senior Aboriginal men offered to spear a man who had assaulted Gordon late one night. He declined their offer. These days Gordon is a popular member of the community, and one can hear the shrill cry of young kids shouting “Oi Neeeil!” as he walks down the main drag. Local women visit Gordon at the police station for no apparent reason, and members of the community report even the most perfunctory of offences. Dr Auty recalls a recent blue light disco organized by Constable Gordon, with West Australian chief justice Wayne Martin as guest of honour. “There was a huge turnout, and everyone just had a ball,” she said. “The kids were all hanging off Neil as he tried to organize the music. We got the chief justice to announce the winner of a bike and basketball, and it was pandemonium for the bike, not the judge. These kids would never have the chance to own their own bike otherwise.” As for the chief justice the experience apparently left him “speechless.” The new way It’s almost a clich© to observe that the true measure of a nation’s greatness lies not in its armoury or treasury, but in the degree of dignity it affords to the most vulnerable within its borders. Consequently, it’s fair to suggest that we should all hang our heads in shame or beat our chests in anger when confronted with illiterate kids behind bars, or dust-covered women and children sleeping in the shadow of one of the world’s largest gold mines. And as each flock of bureaucrats and consultants flies in and out of these places, we scratch our heads and wonder whether these problems are solvable at all. But things are changing in parts of Western Australia. Black fellas are declaring to the world what their rights are, rather than having them drip-fed to them in photogenic moments of bureaucratic charity. They’re helping to dish out public justice rather than merely absorbing it. And white fellas are showing long term commitment in communities, rather than merely talking about it. Judges are giving bikes to kids rather than jailing them, and cops are playing DJ rather than bad-guy. Standing there in the red soils of Boulder Camp, looking through the wire fence at the neighbouring SuperPit, Leo Thomas somehow managed a smile. “Look around here. See these pots and pans neatly laid out? See how someone’s swept around the fireplace? That’s pride. These people don’t have much. But they’ve still got pride.” • Before taking up a post as a legal officer with the United Nations in Suva, Fiji, Jeremy Dicker was seconded to the Goldfields Land & Sea Council. The secondment was funded by Sydney law firm Gilbert + Tobin, as part of the nation-wide Aurora Project, an initiative aimed at encouraging more lawyers and anthropologists to consider careers in Aboriginal affairs. Photo: Lake Ballard, an area claimed by the Wongatha people (Jeremy Dicker