Cameron Costello from the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation says 'Inheriting and rehabilitating country that has been mined is a big responsibility and the people of Quandamooka are ready for the challenge'.
The Quandamooka Festival has come to a close after three months of cultural ceremony and events that have captured the true spirit of land and sea. When you look at the festival program, it is clear the festival showcases the cultural heritage and connection of the First Peoples of the region and connecting communities.
The challenges remain for the Quandamooka people who are the traditional people of Moreton and Redland Bay areas and the surrounding Islands of South East Queensland.
Recently the community from the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation worked with residents on Russell Island to rename the Island back to Kanaipa (Hardened Spear) as the traditional dreaming place. The State Government of Queensland declined the proposal and Cameron Costello from the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation says his people will keep trying.
Their goal is to rename the region back to the original dreaming trail of the Islands of Quandamooka including Minjerribah commonly known as North Stradbroke Island.
Cameron Costello is optimistic about the future for his people. After more than sixty years of sand and water mining on Minjerribah, there has been a resolve and a new plan is in place with mining company Sibelco to transform the economy of tourism into eco culturual tourism and provide a more sustainable culturally safe mechanism of income for the First Nations people.
There is a lot of work set in place over the next five- twenty years to rehabilitate the country and ensure that elders and the youth of Quandamooka have services in place that provide housing, better health outcomes and jobs that will provide brighter future and keep cultural obligations of caring for country-land and sea.
Minjerribah hosts thousands of tourists on the island alone and has and still suffers heritage degradation from over population and commercial interests that have led to land and water pollution.
It's hard to fathom what could have been if the promises of over twenty years ago to stop the cycle of mining and flip the economy over to eco cutlural tourism were honoured.
The plans are in place and the solution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people leading the way into a cleaner, greener way of running an Australia's tourism industry will ensure cultural protection of heritage and prevent the crisis we are seeing to land and sea. The irony is that the tourism industry has and does destroy the very thing that draws visitors to the places and people in the first place. This is where we see that dollars don't make sense.