With Woodside set to make its final decision in the first half of next year, the battle for James Price Point is heating up.
By Jeanette Francis
Phillip Roe looks out at his pristine surroundings. “You see this?” he asks. “This is our university.” He's talking about James Price Point, 3,000 hectares of rugged coast, earmarked to become home to one of the largest offshore natural gas hubs in the world.
Phillip is one of three generations of Goolarabooloo men who have been fighting against the proposed $A34-billion project since the site was chosen from three other Kimberley sites in 2008. He says the area, both land and sea, is home to artefacts, including dinosaur footprints, which date back millions of years.
“It's a classroom. That's where I have my teaching. The Goolarabooloo teaching,” says fellow Goolarabooloo man Richard Hunter. I ask him if he can see a gas hub there, in the middle of the vast ocean. “I can see it and it looks horrible,” he says.
James Price Point is 50 kilometres from Broome in the Kimberley region of north-west Western Australia. Mr Roe says the area is home to the Goolarabooloo Songline, an intricate series of stories, Dreamtime mythology and cultural traditions passed down from generation to generation and inextricably connected to the land.
“If you really and truly look at it, we've got something so powerful. It's something we don't want to lose and the whole world will share [it] with us,” says Mr Roe. “It's just so important that people realise our way and what it means to us. That's why we are fighting. It will cost us our lives,” he says.
MUCH-NEEDED FUNDING
Far from the beauty of the coastline, Warren Greatorex pulls up into the driveway of an old dilapidated home, one of several in Broome's One Mile settlement. “It's an Aboriginal reserve that was formed here back in the early 1900s,” says Mr Greatorex. “But when you take a look around you wouldn't think that they've been here for all this time,” he says.
One Mile is home to 200 Indigenous residents. Around the settlement are several makeshift buildings that were once inhabited but now abandoned.
“You can just see the state and the conditions that some of our people have to live in. It seems to be an acceptable thing here which is a far cry from what it should be,” says Mr Greatorex, the chairman of Waardi Limited, a body set up by the Kimberley Land Council to administer the money from a deal signed between the KLC, Woodside and the West Australian government in 2009.
The deal will see $1.5 billion over 30 years pumped into Indigenous communities across the Kimberley, and – according to Mr Greatorex – the beneficiaries will be places like One Mile. “We don't want people coming in here and doing things for us,” he says. “We want to do it for ourselves and this money will help us do that.”
COMPLEX SPLIT
Warren is also a Jabirr Jabirr traditional owner, the majority of who want to see the gas hub proceed. But the Jabirr Jabirr community are joint native title claimants with Goolarabooloo, who don't.
Both Goolarabooloo and Jabbir Jabbir were represented by the KLC in 2009 when the deal was struck but according to Phillip Roe, it was a 60:40 split and the deal was further undermined by repeated efforts by an eager West Australian government to compulsorily acquire the land.
Jabbir Jabbir and Goolarabooloo are now locked in a battle of words over who has a right to speak for country, and more critically the coastline of James Price Point. The dispute has a long and complex history dating back generations to Phillip Roe's grandfather Paddy Roe, who as an outsider entered Jabbir Jabbir country in 1931 and was entrusted by Jabbir Jabbir elders to carry on the name, songs and stories of the land.
The Goolarabooloo people have long sought their own native title claim and earlier this year, along with Jabbir Jabbir, applied to the Federal Court to have their joint claim separated. The application was retracted in June after both sides were advised that separating would breach the terms of the 2009 deal and both sides could end up with nothing.
MUDDYING WHALE-FILLED WATERS
Beneath the piercing blue Kimberley sky, the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd ferried media, environmental groups, local politicians and interested parties through what it called the largest humpback whale nursery in the world.
On board each day was the former Greens leader Bob Brown, whose visit to James Price Point on board the Steve Irwin was seen by Jabbir Jabbir as partial to Goolarabooloo. In a scathing letter addressed to Mr Brown, Jabbir Jabbir woman Rita Augustine accused him of treating indigenous people like museum pieces.
“It hasn't been easy, but we have made a decision -- a majority decision -- to face up to our own challenges and to build a better future for our children, our people, our culture, and our country,” she says.
WATCH Sea Shepherd campaigning against gas hub via YouTube:
SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Mr Brown has denied taking sides, saying he was only there to draw attention to the environmental consequences of the proposed hub. Those consequences, according to Environs Kimberley spokesman Martin Pritchard, could mean the end of the Kimberley as people know it.
“If this gas hub went ahead it would be the beginning of the industrialisation of the Kimberley. We're talking opening the door to large scale industrialisation in other parts of the Kimberley because we would have a cheap source of energy coming on shore,” says Mr Pritchard.
“What we've had is about five years of this proposal looming over the community like a big dark cloud. We're coming to the point now where the tough decisions are going to have to be made,” he says.
One of those tough decisions will be by the Federal environment minister, who will have to make the final decision on a report by the WA Environmental Protection Authority last month, which approved the project.
Woodside says it will conclude its feasibility study in the coming months ahead of a final decision to be made in the first half of next year.
REPORT: GAS HUB DIVIDES INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
REPORT: HOW WILL THE GAS HUB AFFECT BROOME?
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