Murrandoo’s Burketown

By Tony Kelly

Sitting in the hot and humid Burketown hall at his father and community leader Phillip Yanner’s funeral in late 1991, Murrandoo Yanner felt the love: the love from the packed room of mourners for the great man that his father was; and the love of his father for family, community and country. In those moments, Murrandoo knew it was time to come home and take up the reins of bringing justice to his people of north-west Queensland, and reviving their culture and authority. Murrandoo, then only 19, resigned his cadetjournalist job in Townsville, and became coordinator of the Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, set up by his dad a decade earlier. But first, Blue Bob and other senior elders told the young Gangalidda– Garawa man, “You’ve been to white man’s university, now it’s time for the bush uni.” The Garawa elders took him west over the border into the Northern Territory, where their traditional culture was still strong, and put him through the law.

But it wasn’t just love that propelled Murrandoo, it was also anger, and there was a lot to be angry about. Burketown, also known as Moungibi by the Gangalidda traditional owners, sits on a lowland coastal plain surrounded by mudflats, salt pans and mangroves on the Gulf of Carpentaria, more than 400 kilometres north of Mount Isa and almost 900 kilometres west of Cairns. Seventy per cent of its population of 170 are Aboriginal but at that time they didn’t have their hands on any of the levers of power and had been outcasts on their own country for generations. The violence of the frontier was within living memory. The Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island, just off the coast, were, as anthropologist Richard J. Martin describes in his 2019 book, The Gulf Country, “some of the last to come under substantive colonial control”, when they were moved against their will to nearby Mornington Island in 1946. For good measure, the colonisers poisoned the spring on Bentinck to prevent people from returning; the final stanza in nearly a hundred years of violent dispossession.

Murrandoo’s first opportunity to make good his commitment to his people came swiftly, as Conzinc Riotinto of Australia (CRA) was planning in 1994 to dig the largest open-pit zinc mine in the world adjacent to Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill Gorge), south of Burketown. These were the first mining negotiations under the newly minted Native Title Act and there was a lot at stake, not only for the region but for the whole country.

Murrandoo proved to be a natural leader – charismatic, hardworking and brave – as he took on the might of the mining company and its backers in Wayne Goss’s Labor government. The more seasoned campaigner Tracker Tilmouth was brought in from Central Australia to guide the young Murrandoo, and advised him to achieve victory “by stealth”.

Under Tracker’s eye, Murrandoo led a sit-in of more than 250 Waanyi, Garawa and Gangalidda traditional owners in Boodjamulla, demanding greater environmental protection from the impacts of the proposed mine and joint management of the adjacent national park. They weren’t breaking the law and couldn’t be moved on until their demands were met.

In attempts to discredit and sideline Murrandoo, the Queensland police raided his house and found crocodile meat in his freezer and fined him under the state’s fauna conservation laws. He challenged the fine and the Mount Isa Magistrates Court found in his favour, agreeing that Murrandoo held traditional connection to country and was within his rights to hunt. This decision was appealed by the Queensland government and the fine reinstated. Murrandoo took the case to the High Court and won. This boosted his standing and the confidence of the traditional owners.

He continued to provoke, threatening the new National Party premier, Rob Borbidge, that “there will be blood in the streets” if the state government went through with plans to change the law to disadvantage the traditional owners in the mine negotiations.

In the midst of the tense negotiations, Murrandoo’s house was burnt down, along with those of others. The Burke Shire Council offices were also targeted. The town was at war with itself, with people lining up for and against the mine, and not always along racial lines.

A deal was eventually struck. At the time considered one of the best in the country, it brought not only the protection of cultural sites but also millions of dollars in compensation, jobs, infrastructure, and economic development opportunities for the traditional owners and the region. And CRA got its mine. Reaching agreement demonstrated to the mining sector, governments and the community that deals can be done with Aboriginal landowners, and that mutual interests are best served if you are prepared to sit around the table and talk.

However, Murrandoo himself was not in good shape. His anger and sense of injustice led to violence and two stints in the Townsville Correctional Centre. He lost his job, became ineligible to sit on boards and faded from the national stage.

Fast forward to 2020 and Burketown is a different place. The Burke Shire Council (previously the bastion of the pastoralists and merchants) and the Carpentaria Land Council sit opposite each other on Musgrave Street. Once they eyed each other off as adversaries; now they are collaborators. Traditional owners are steadily filling the management ranks of the shire offices, and two out of five councillors, one of whom is the deputy mayor, are Aboriginal. The pub, the shop, the lodge and the tour company are among the businesses that now have Aboriginal owners, along with most of the land in and around town. If you want a commercial fishing licence, you have to apply to the Gangalidda. “We now run the town,” says Murrandoo’s oldest son, Mangubadijarri, who was named after the sound of the splash made by a barramundi’s tail when it leaps from the water.

Mangu, as he is known to his friends and family, is on a break from legal and international relations studies on the Gold Coast to work as cultural adviser and teacher’s aide at Burketown State School. Under his guidance and with the support of the principal, Chris Ford, the school has been transformed. A key new development is that Gangalidda is taught to all the students and language is now commonly spoken around town. “It’s heartening to see the elders relearning words from the kids,” Mangu says.

There are several ranger programs in the region run by traditional owners who work closely with pastoralists to restore country to good health. “The only reason it works,” Mangu says, referring to the town’s newfound harmony, “is because of the leadership of people and the collective drive of everyone working together, Indigenous and non-indigenous.” Principal Ford adds that the real key is listening. “Murrandoo taught me that when I first arrived here six years ago,” Ford says. “And love – he taught me that love must be part of everything we do.”

As a result of the listening (and the love), the lawlessness of the frontier town has gone, replaced by an informal but effective justice. “The police are more or less banned from town,” according to Murrandoo. “Who needs ’em? If someone acts up, they don’t get served at the pub or the shop.” Mangu says there is no trouble with kids running amok at night; when the streetlights come on, the kids know it’s time to go home.

Burke Shire Council chief executive Clare Keenan describes Burketown as a “model remote multicultural community”. She sees nothing but a positive future for the town and the region, and puts this down to very strong Aboriginal leaders, especially Murrandoo.

The 2020 Murrandoo is also a different man, still with the same fire in his belly and the vision, but not as angry, more patient. As he says, “A man must change himself first and then his family, his community and then the nation.”

Bob Katter, the federal member for Kennedy, agrees that Murrandoo has changed. “He’s mellower now, but still a tough, articulate fighter. He’s not only good for north-west Queensland, he’s a force for a greater Australia.” Countrywoman and writer Alexis Wright concurs: “He’s a man made for these times.”

Since Murrandoo returned to country and went through the law, elders have been initiating the young men on a regular basis: a practice that had been absent on the Queensland side of the border for many years has been restored. It is on these young initiates that Murrandoo’s attention is now focused. “Change takes three generations,” he says. “My father’s generation started it and then my generation took on the challenge. It’s up to the next to make it real.”

Blue Bob’s son Donald, himself now a senior Garawa man, says, “Murrandoo needed to be angry ’cause he was fighting for his people. Now he doesn’t need to be such a fighter, as we now have our rights in law and culture.” Donald also reckons young Mangu is “switched on” and is pleased he too has come back to work for the community.

In her 2017 book, Tracker, Alexis Wright describes how, in the midst of the mine negotiations, Tracker Tilmouth told Murrandoo he needed to “dare to dream”. Murrandoo did. He dreamt “of having a little sovereignty, a mini-state within the Gulf again one day in the future”.

“A man must change himself first and then his family, his community and then the nation.”