SOMETHING THAT MONEY CAN'T FIX
27.07.1996
A BORIGINAL firebrand Murrandoo Yanner, spokesman for Gulf country ind igenous people and nemesis of Century Zinc Ltd, appreciates the local history and legends of the north.
And that's why he says he would ""rather be remembered as a Joe Flick than a Nym''.
To anyone who has not had the opportunity to visit the site of the proposed $1 billion Century mine at Lawn Hill north-east of Mt Isa, the statement means nothing.
The bodies of Joe Flick and blacktracker Nym are buried in graves in the bush behind Lawn Hill homestead.
Joe Flick was part-Aboriginal, and was tagged an ""outlaw'' because he was involved in cattle duffing and robbery.
But his greatest crime occurred at Lawn Hill homestead in 1889.
He was holed up in the house when a very courageous policeman, Snr-Constable Alfred Wavell, approached him to give himself up to face charges of attempted murder.
Flick shot the policeman dead. Flick was kept pinned down in the house until the station manager, Mr Hann, arrived and negotiated with Flick. Hann approached the house, and he too was shot in the chest but survived.
Flick escaped from the house that night and hid in a gully nearby.
He had been wounded and the next morning the trackers followed him to his lair.
From his hiding place, Flick shot the tracker Nym dead. A posse had formed by this time and a fusillade of shots managed to put an end to the outlaw.
Until a decade ago Flick was buried face down (to the devil) in an unmarked grave beside that of Constable Wavell and Nym.
Nym's epitaph reads: ""Nym, black boy who was shot by Joe Flick, 28th October, 1889. A faithful boy was Nym.''
It has taken old (Aboriginal) hard heads like Ray Robinson,
Gerhardt Pearson and Colin Saltmere to settle Murrandoo down and get him to see that the sensible course is to sit and listen to what the miners and the government want.
When that is done, the natural progression is to see whether an agreement satisfactory to all sides is achievable.
The billion-dollar Century mine is a development sorely needed by Australia for the export dollars it will earn and the employment it will generate.
But gone are the days when the rights of Aboriginal people can be trampled, or when they can be taken for granted.
Murrandoo Yanner has been the subject of an incredibly malicious campaign, with accusations that he has been involved in arson,assaults, standover, cattle-killing and almost any other crime imaginable.
Yet the only charges laid allege that he speared a crocodile which he ate and from which he kept the skin; something his forebears have been doing for centuries.
Journalists have been supplied with a detailed document from one of
his detractors alleging that he had a poor academic record at school "and anyway his real name is Jason''.
People, including Premier Rob Borbidge, have insisted on using his given name instead of his Aboriginal name. Whether that was an attempt to deny his Aboriginality or to demean his chosen name is speculative.
But it is insensitive and typifies the disdain that many have displayed in their treatment of black rights over the Century proposal.
It is reminiscent of the time when Aboriginal poet and one of Australia's finest citizens, Kath Walker, announced that she would be taking her tribal name _ Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
A Queensland government minister at the time, when speaking to journalists, used delight in referring to her as Oodgeroo F...knuckle.
An angry young white person who stands up for the rights of
minorities is tagged as a ""radical''. There's a ""freedom-fighter'' air about those who display a social conscience and stick up for green
issues, conservation, the unemployed, single mothers or scores of other issues.
But such dignity of description is denied if the ""radical'' has dark skin, or speaks of the ""rights'' of Aborigines.
On Thursday Yanner said in an interview that money was not the issue with Century. Rather, the issue was the destruction of the land that is the traditional home for 5000 Aboriginal people.
He despaired about how money was supposed to solve all problems, and added that big pay cheques in the Aboriginal communities just meant more drunkenness, more fighting, more hopelessness.
""That's what has been causing the riots in Doomadgee in the last fortnight,'' he said.
"The community is split over the Century issue. Century has
insisted on flying a select group of Aboriginal people around like the CRA dance troupe and they are trotted out to the media when a view counter to our's is wanted.
"ABORIGINAL people are not meant to live 1500 to a settlement like Doomadgee where three tribes were forced to join.
"There have been eight suicides in the last two months on
Doomadgee and Mornington _ one a child just eight years old. What could drive a child that young to take his own life?
"No, it's not money. We want our land and the clean water and the fishing. When the mine's finished and gone, what will we be left with? You can't eat money.''
He pointed out that a recent examination of 38 children in the community found 33 suffered severe ear problems. Much of it was put
down to dust-borne germs.
""Why wouldn't it be that?'' he said.
""They live on dirt streets and heavy vehicles go past kicking up the dust into the houses. Dogs and cats soil the dust and it's everywhere around the kids.''
He asserts that the communities are ""concentration camps'' and that Aborigines have been fighting for their rights in Australia for the past 208 years.
And, although wiser counsel has prevailed and convinced him that the answer to Century lies at the negotiating table, he's still an angry young man who every day has to face scenes of devastation and drunken despair that typify Aboriginal communities in Queensland.
And consequently he'd rather be buried face-down in an unmarked grave like Joe Flick than have a headstone which read: ""A faithful boy
was Murrandoo''.
MEMORIAL . . . blacktracker Nym's grave at Lawn Hill.
