Readers will know that I have borrowed the name for this blog – The Northern Myth – from a favourite book of mine of the same name published in 1965 and written by the distinguished agricultural scientist and economist Dr Bruce R. Davidson.

Davidson was a man well before his time and of whom many of the current boosters of the mantra of “develop the north” should take notice.

He was highly sceptical of the overblown claims being made by politicians, commentators and other boosters in the 1950’s and 1960’s of the potential of the north as an unburdened paradise for broad-scale agricultural development.

Davidson’s The Northern Myth presents a brutally clinical assessment – based on good science and thoroughly researched economics – of the prospects for many areas of agricultural and pastoral development across the top one-third of the Australian continent.

Parts of Davidson’s book are of course somewhat dated – but I’m sure that Davidson would be just as sceptical of some of the current claims being made – by the same classes of people – about the apparently bountiful future of agriculture in the north.

The most well-known of the failed experiments in northern broad-acre farming in the Top End was the Humpty Doo rice farm project.

The good folk at the Litchfield Shire Council provide this useful snapshot of the rice project – and of the mood of the time that is strikingly similar to some current views:

Rice grown at Humpty Doo was going to feed the starving millions in Asia. The Northern Territory could become the world’s food bowl – and the post-war world desperately needed food. With new skills, new markets, big money, and big ideas, northern development would become a reality, not just a hollow cliché. Certainly there had been failures before, the optimists admitted. But things were different now, they reasoned. Past failures were attributed to bad luck, bad judgment, inadequate capital investment, and similar reasons. Now, all these limitations and reasons for failure could be swept aside by a new wave of large scale capital development. And the Territory’s coastal plains would at last live up to all the hopes which had been held for them since explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1862 said of the area “it could be the finest colony under the Crown – capable of growing any and every thing.”

It didn’t quite turn out that way.

Suddenly, in the 1950s, the area became the focus for national ambitions to develop the north. The spectacular failure of these ambitions made the name “Humpty Doo” part of Australian folk lore.

In 1954 the junior Menzies government Minister Harold Holt infected the American mega-millionaire Alan Chase with enthusiasm for rice growing at Humpty Doo. Chase formed a grand plan for planting half a million acres to make the NT the world’s biggest rice producer. Chase declared that the Territory would be a food bulwark against communism. “Hunger in Asia breeds communism, and I believe that we have here the means of removing that hunger.” A specially commissioned film, “The Miracle of Humpty Doo” was produced and widely shown.

Chase formed a company Territory Rice which began experiments and plantings. By 1959 there were 5,500 acres under cultivation. It was proposed that the rice growing area would be subdivided in to 400 small farms, with housing and townships.

Magpie geese got the blame, but there were many more fundamental reasons – the project was always undercapitalised; no allowance had been made for rainfall and sunshine variability; soils were poor and drainage unsuitable; costs were high and poorly controlled; and marketing was never properly organised.

A few years later the land-clearing bug was still afoot in the Top End.

This excerpt comes from the NT Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment report, Land Clearing in the Northern Territory, written by E.J. Hosking in 2002:

In 1967 the first large-scale clearing project occurred in the Northern Territory on Tipperary station by the Tipperary Land Corporation (TLC) and at the time was believed to be the one of the biggest single agricultural projects in the world (NT News, 24/07/1967). The scheme planned for 79,000 ha to be cleared over 5 years, however, poor management, seasons and trying to do too much too soon eventually sent the Texan-based company broke (Mollah, 1980). Not learning from these mistakes, the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) undertook a similar feat in the early 1970s on Willeroo Station. An estimated 48,600 ha was recorded as cleared, with only 16,000 ha ever being farmed (Fisher, 1977).

With self Government in 1978, the NT launched the Agricultural Development and Marketing Authority (ADMA) in 1981/82. This Authority assisted private cropping developments (Sturtz, 2000) that helped establish the NT horticultural industry, and resulted in further clearing on Tipperary station in 1988/89 and development of the Douglas Daly research farms.

The Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee is currently having a close look at forestry and mining operations on the Tiwi Islands just off the coast from Darwin. The Committee was scheduled to submit it’s report by Monday 26th October but there is no sign of the report at the Committee’s website and it has yet to be tabled in Parliament.

I’d heard a few weeks ago that the Committee would not make that deadline, in part due to the sheer complexity of the matters it has been charged with investigating, and also because there is a fair likelihood of separate reports from the Committee members.

You can see the Committee’s Terms of Reference here.

I’ve previously examined the mess that is left of the Tiwi Forestry operations here and here.

Most recently I looked at the predictable failure of the MIS schemes promoted by Great Southern Plantations, the operators of the large-scale Acacia mangium plantations on the Tiwi Islands that have been left to rot after its collapse in May this year.

It is clear, to me at least, that the collapse of the forestry operations on the Tiwi islands represents not just a failure of an ambitious agricultural scheme but also a failure of good corporate governance and highlights the need to conduct appropriate risk, economic and environmental analyses of the overall project – particularly in environmentally and culturally sensitive areas.

And it is not just in Australia that the Tiwi Forestry operations have drawn attention.

In late September Verlyn Klinkenborg editorialised in the New York Times and pointed to the broader impacts of the collapse of the forestry scheme on the islands:

…this is not just another forestry project gone awry — 75,000 acres of bankrupt monoculture where there used to be native tropical woodland…What’s left behind is a sense of desolation and distrust. I talked with several Tiwi Islanders — over a dinner of mud crab, local barramundi, local mussels and magpie goose — and it was clear that many of them doubted the good faith not only of Great Southern and the Northern Territory government but also their own Tiwi Land Council, which had encouraged the partnership

...

The question that night at dinner wasn’t just the economic loss involved — the loss of jobs and royalties and individual investments. It was the meaning of this failure, its demoralizing effect on a people who have been striving to find a way toward economic self-determination. Like traditional owners on the mainland, the Tiwi have had to struggle with the cruel vicissitudes of Australian policy toward its aboriginal population — everything from the brutality of official racism to the confused tolerance that has come in more recent times with cultural and political empowerment.

Apart from the social fallout from the failure of the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council and Great Southern Plantations there are the very real questions about what will happen to the trees in the ground – will they be left to rot or is at least some part of the project capable of being salvaged?

On 16th May 2009 Administrators were appointed to Great Southern Group. Subsequently, on 18 May 2009 McGrathNicol were appointed Receivers and Managers of Great Southern Limited and certain subsidiaries of Great Southern.

In September McGrathNicol issued Circulars to Investors advising that the Tiwi Island forestry schemes (which consisted of a large number of tree-plots leased by small investors) would be unfunded after 30 September.

On 2 October McGrathNicol issued a further Circular to Investors in the Tiwi Leases, advising that:

The Tiwi Island operations are commercially unviable. The operating costs and capital expenditure requirements are extremely high. As we have been without funding for the Tiwi Island operations from 30 September 2009, we have commenced cessation of these operations. We also wrote to the landlords, the Tiwi Land Council, on 30 September 2009 advising that we will not be accepting any liability for the lease costs from 30 September 2009.

On 1 October 2009 the Tiwi Land Council terminated all head leases on the Tiwi Islands, relying on a clause contained in the head leases which entitled the landlord to terminate in the event of the insolvency of GSMAL.

In June the Tiwi Land Council had told the ABC that it needed a total of $120 million in order to:

…make the forestry plantations on the Tiwi Islands viable following the collapse of Great Southern Plantations…the land council’s Cyril Kalippa says he has asked the Federal Government for help because Great Southern’s account estimates show substantial money will need to be found to keep it going. “We need about $80 million for the next three years – that’s for the wages and the things that we need to operate the forest. “And also we need $40 million to extend the wharf or the jetty so that 50 tonne ships can come in and pick up the chip wood.”

Apart from the huge sums to keep the trees in the ground and alive – and the money to rebuild a ruined jetty – there remain very real questions about the viability of the whole scheme and who might front the large sums of money in a very tight market to a project with a troubled past and a far from certain future.

In early October The Australian reported that the Tiwi Land Council was optimistic that the project was still viable:

Despite the withdrawal of support from a banking consortium last month, Tiwi Land Council chief executive John Hicks said global demand for woodchips indicated the scheme was “clearly a viable operation”. “We have got it debt-free,” Mr Hicks said. “And it has a minimal rate of return of between 15 and 30 per cent.” The plantations will be harvested on decade-long cycles and landowners now have title to all fixed assets, including the camp headquarters, sewerage farm, port infrastructure, and airstrips. The TLC estimates it will need $80m to manage the plantation to maturity in 2013 and fix the Melville Island wharf so the trees can be exported.

Mr Hicks said at least 15 private investors had indicated they were prepared to support the group in the run-up to the first harvest in 2013. Mr Hicks said the 20 staff on the operation had been retained and that the plant had the potential to create 660 jobs in associated industries.

The controversial venture has already fallen victim to a cyclone and Great Southern was last year ordered to pay $4m for breaching environmental guidelines.

On 2nd October – the same day that McGrathNicols described the Tiwi Forestry project as “commercially unviable”, Dr Judith Ajani gave evidence to the Senate Committee’s Inquiry at Hearings in Canberra.

Dr Ajani is an economist specialising in forest and plantation research at the Fenner School at the ANU, where she has worked since 1996.  She is the author of ‘The Forest Wars‘ (MUP 2007) and is well placed to comment on the Tiwi forestry schemes.

Dr Ajani’s evidence to the Senate Committee centred on her assessments of the short-term propsects of Australia’s woodchip production and exports, the likely demand for the low-grade woodchips from the Tiwi Islands over the period 2010 to 2014 and the looming glut in supply caused by the rapidly increasing supply of plantation hardwood chips from plantations planted under the MIS schemes.

This is a glut that Dr Ajani says will require Australia to double the volume of sales into a flat market (Japan) where we export up to eighty-five per cent of out chips and where we  already supply about one-third of their intake – and that this will commence as soon as early in 2010.

Responding to questions from Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, Dr Ajani told the Committee that:

Dr. Ajani: What we have at the moment, and it is the really crucial issue here, is a very big volume of hardwood chip resources coming on stream from [Australian] plantations and we also have the native forest resource hanging in there as a continuing significant supplier of hardwood chips.

…

So what we are looking at here is Australia’s plantation chip resource increasing from our current level of production of around 4 million cubic metres per annum—that is the volume of that resource that we export currently from hardwood plantations—to around 14 million cubic metres per annum by 2010-2014. Native forest resources in there at the moment are supplying around 5½ million cubic metres. We have inevitably some very big resource volumes coming on stream very quickly. Some people might say that this is not a glut situation. I think they are not being open in their assessment of the reality here.

…

…with a glut we have a problem that happens in any commodity industry. Lower quality resources are the ones that always struggle to get market share and, in particular, to get market share at the price they expect.

…

…the Tiwi Islands chips using Acacia mangium are of a lower quality. They are of a lower quality, according to Great Southern plantations, because they have a lower pulp yield—in other words, you need more wood to make the same volume of pulp—and they are of a lower quality in terms of the additional costs that are required with respect to bleaching for paper production. That is information that Great Southern itself presented.

NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin asked Dr Ajani how the Tiwi might deal with their very real practical problems – they have trees in the ground that will cost a lot to maintain before they can be harvested and sold into an uncertain market:

Dr. Ajani: …it is a complicated problem…the Tiwi Island issue is embedded in a much bigger problem, which is the plantation MIS arrangements as a whole. The first job is to contain the problem. It is not just for the Tiwi islanders but also Australia wide—that is, in my view we should terminate the plantation MIS arrangements, because the last thing we want is greater havoc being played because we have more investment going into these operations while we are facing the market as I have described. The issue you raise is: what then happens to the trees?

…

…given the information that Great Southern itself provided some time ago and given the market conditions, there should be a great care about further expanding the plantation estate.

Liberal Senator Ian McDonald, in previous governments a Minister that provided no small measure of support for the plantation industry in general and MIS schemes in particular, asked a number of forceful questions of Dr Ajani, concluding with a question that revealed his belligerence and inability to comprehend her evidence:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—Chair, I am at a loss to understand the evidence Dr Ajani is giving.

Chair of the Committee is the Liberal Senator for South Australia, Simon Birmingham asked Dr Adjani about the prospects of the world hardwood chip market.

CHAIR— Dr Ajani, is the global hardwood chip market still growing?

Dr Ajani—The global hardwood chip market is largely flat…The trade figures are largely flat. The current downturn also is not presented in this graph on page 4. I do not see the hardwood chip trade globally recovering to such an extent that the wood volumes that we have coming on stream, virtually immediately, are going to be cleared easily and without putting pressure on the price.

Dr Ajani—…We are seeing globally a very strong separation of wood into wood products—paper and sawn timber—and the actual production trends of those products. In other words, what we are seeing globally are resource saving technologies coming through such that the strong growth in wood products is not flowing through to strong growth in wood input.

CHAIR—Recycling technologies and so on are substituting for plantation and native woodchips—is that your contention?

Dr Ajani—Yes. The main play here in the paper market is the role of recycled paper dampening the demand for wood despite strong growth in paper consumption.

Senator McDonald returned for one last unsuccessful shot at Dr. Ajani:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—What is your concern about the Tiwi Islands, from the Tiwi Islanders’ point of view?

Dr Ajani—I think they have a product which is not well placed in the play that is going to unfold over the next few years as our hardwood plantation resource comes onto the market.

In short, it seems that the Tiwi have been landed with a white elephant of monumental proportions – large swathes of pristine, high conservation-value tropical forest have been stripped and burned – or sold off in curious deals that have only made a loss to date.

The Tiwi have now been forced to go cap-in-hand for money from a cautious market and Governments that, understandably, have little inclination to throw good money after bad for a resource of dubious sustainability and diminishing value.

Many think that Tiwi Forestry is just another Northern Myth – an ambitious but poorly-researched and managed scheme that will – if it has not already – see large tracts of precious tropical forest land laid to waste for no good end.

As I indicated above, the Tiwi Islands forestry case is complex and I have only just touched the surface here.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me – so if you have a view contrary to mine please register, and leave a (hopefully constructive) comment.

Similarly if you feel you may have something to add to or support my comments then please do the same.

You can read some background material (from a blog run by the NT Environment Centre in Darwin) here.

And I’d encourage you to read the Submissions and Transcripts of Evidence given to the Senate Committee at the Committee’s website here.

Thanks for taking the time to get this far!!

This is a not-so-short update on the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island bird knowledge project I’ve been working on for – well, years now.

My initial interest in this topic was prompted by spending time with Aboriginal people soon after I moved to the Top End of the NT in the mid-eighties – it was soon apparent to me that Aboriginal people had a wealth of knowledge about the birds that they hunted and ate and celebrated in dance, song and art and that forms a rich thread running through their mythology, traditions and culture.

Fifteen years, a law degree and a temporary move to the south coast of NSW later I finally got to attend the post-grad certificate course at Charles Sturt University at the Thurgoona campus at Albury. There I asked lecturer, course coordinator and general all-round great guy Dr Dave Watson if he might have some thoughts about what to do about the apparent lack of appreciation of the knowledge and appreciation of Aboriginal birdknowledge by ‘mainstream’ (for want of a better term) birdwatchers and ornithologists.

Dave’s answer was short and sweet – “Well Bob, if no-one else has done it you’d better do it yourself!”. Little did I know what lay in store by my simple response that I’d do my best!

A telling fact that drove my interest in the early nineties was that the most substantial single source of Aboriginal bird knowledge in the mainstream ornithological literature was John Gould’s “Handbook to The Birds of Australia”, published in 1865. I’ve not been able to find a replacement candidate as the primary source – and much of the information contained therein was collected by one of Gould’s collectors, John Gilbert, who was taken from us too soon in 1845 while on a cross-country expedition with Ludwig Leichhardt.

Anyway, eight years on from Dave’s wise words I’m getting closer to producing my attempt at an overview of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bird knowledge in a single volume. CSIRO Publishing will publish the book (with a tentaive and somewhat boring working title of “Australian Aboriginal Bird Knowledge”) in mid to late 2010 – dependent upon when I get the finished work to them.

One thing I do note is that it will not, indeed cannot, be a complete compendium of such knowledge – that would take more time and many more volumes than I have time for. But what I do hope is that it will start a broader interest and enquiry about local bird knowledge among the many distinct language groups and cultural blocs around the country – particularly in light of the growing importance of Aboriginal land management in many part of Australia.

I’ve spent a large part of the last five years (at least) collecting the literature – mainly from many hours in dusty (and not so dusty) libraries across Australia and across the globe (I’ve found some great works in libraries in Cambridge, Cape Town, Arkansas and New Orleans, to name a few), and have a stack – literally – of secondary research material.

What has occupied a large part of my time this year is organising and doing what I think will be the most important part of the book – travelling around the country talking to any Aboriginal person or group with an interest in taking part in my project. So far I’ve done a few trips up and down the NT – into the southern fringes of Arnhem Land – where I lived for a while in the eighties and nineties, around and to the west of Katherine and up and down the Stuart Highway.

I’ve also been into the east Kimberleys, South Australia (twice) and have just returned home here to Yuendumu (300 kilometres n-w of Alice Springs) from my latest trip that took me through eastern South Australia, coastal Victoria, southern and north-western NSW and central and western Queensland – a total of about 10,000 km.

In a week or so I’ll take off up the Tanami Track via Balgo and surrounds, then back into the eastern Kimberley, across to Broome and then down to the Pilbara – then back along that same route – that should take me the best part of a month.

After a week or so at home I’m planning a route that will take me up the Stuart Highway to just south of Katherine, where I’ll take the Central Arnhem Road via Wugularr, Bulman, Gapuwiyak to the heartlands of Yolngu culture around n-e Arnhem land. Then I hope to travel across through to Raminging and Maningrida in central Arnhem Land then back through Kakadu to Oenpelli and Jabiru. Depending on time and inclination I’ll either swing towards Darwin or south via katherine and the Barkly, eventually ending up here at Yuendumu for a few days.

By then it should be sometime in early November and I’ll turn my wheels eastward – if I’m lucky with time and weather I’d like to travel back into Queensland via the Plenty Highway – so much shorter, but rougher – than travelling via Tennant Creek and the Barkly) to Boulia – then back through s-w Queensland towards n-w NSW – eventually ending up in Walgett where I hope to spend some time again with the Dhariwaa Elders Group.

Then to the Australasian Ornithological Conference in Armidale in late November and early December. Then back through coastal northern NSW, up the coast to (about) Townsville then back across the NT and home.

That will be just about all of the field trips for this year – I have a couple of trips – by air – to Tasmania via Melbourne (to catch up on the excellent resources in the several libraries there) and then in mid- January hopefully to be in the Torres Strait islands about the same time that Dr Rohan Clarke from Monash Uni will be doing some field work there. And I may have a short road trip down to western South Australia and another up to the Gulf country.

And then – sitting down for a couple of months and putting it all together into some sort of shape that people – will want to read – and hopefully and more importantly – buy.

Finally, I’ve learned a lot about methodology for ethnobiology over the past that I hope to apply in a more specific PhD project looking at the application of local bird knowledge to local conservation and land management efforts here in the Tanami. And I’ll be talking about methodology at AOC 2009 in Armidale and at the back-to-back conferences of the International Society of Ethnobiology and Society for Ethnobiology which will be held on the magnificent Vancouver island in British Columbia in May next year.

And by the way – if you are interested in having a look at a great set of posters (that I’ve written about earlier here) in for central Australian languages have a look at the set of posters that my friend and colleague Myfany Turpin, of the University of Queensland and the Charles Darwin University School for Policy and Social Research, has produced. The series of posters are of bird knowledge in the Arrernte, Anmatyerr, Alyawarr and Kaytetye languages spoken throughout central Australia.

Individually they portray 25 or so birds found in the areas in which each language is spoken. As a set they reveal the depth of knowledge that Aboriginal people have of the birds that they hunt, share campsites and townships with and which are spiritually important or are involved in or related to traditional ceremonies and beliefs.
If you want any further information about my project please send an email to birdknowledge@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to send an Information Sheet or answer – as best I can – your queries. And please feel free to pass this email on to anyone you think might be interested in this project.

Cheers and I may see you on the road over the next few months.

Centrecorp is, as the Federal Government’s own Office of Evaluation and Audit (Indigenous Programs) noted in a Report of November 2008, a:

…very successful private organisation which has received approximately $25.1m in support from the Australian Government. As noted in its various establishment documents, Centrecorp has taken “advantage of investment and commercial opportunities” for the benefit of Aboriginal people in Central Australia and have built an impressive asset base over the past 23 years.

The Office of Evaluation and Audit (Indigenous Programs) provides the Commonwealth government with:

…objective advice to the Australian Government about the management and performance of its programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We make recommendations about how Indigenous-specific programs can be improved, and how the Australian Government can deliver better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Originally part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), OEA was established administratively within the Department of Finance and Deregulation in July 2004 and confirmed in legislation by section 193W of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2005.

Centrecorp was established in 1985 to, according to its Memorandum of Association:

“… undertake and implement activities which further the economic and social development of Aboriginals and which are conducive to the advancement of Aboriginals.”

Three of the five $1 shares in of Centrecorp are owned by the Central Land Council. Centrecorp operates two charitable trusts of which it is a trustee and through a combination of good management, fortune and circumstance Centrecorp has grown to be one of the largest investors in central Australia, with interests in a car dealership, a shopping centre, a real estate agency, supermarkets, a gas pipeline, tourist resort and various other small projects.

The value of Centrecorp’s investments are, on a national scale, relatively modest — however in the the poisonous atmosphere of small-town Northern Territory politics the combination of blackfellas, money and complex corporate structures are bound to attract some negative attention — particularly among the uninformed and those that remain wilfully blind to the objective facts.

The Alice Springs News is a freebie local weekly that usually runs to about 16 modest pages and is often more entertaining than informative. Like many freebie newspapers, on occasion the Alice Springs News can seem more like a hobby-horse for the proprietors pet peeves, predilections and prejudices.

And so it is, it seems, with Centrecorp and the three $1 shares owned by the Central Land Council.

On its own admission, the Alice Springs News has:

“… been covering the Centrecorp controversy in 44 reports and comment pieces since April 1998, and a dossier of Alice Springs News reports was a substantial part of the briefing NT Senator Nigel Scullion gave Senator Brandis.”

The reference to Senators Scullion and Brandis links to a series of questions asked by Senator Brandis of David Ross, Director of the Central Land Council, in Senate Community Affairs Committee Supplementary Estimates Hearings in late October 2008 and followup questions in early 2009.

On 14 May 2009 the Senate referred to the Finance and Public Administration References Committee a brief to investigate the relationship between the Central Land Council and Centrecorp.

The Terms of Reference direct the Committee to inquire and report by 11 August 2009 on:

1. the relationship between the Central Land Council and Centrecorp Aboriginal Investment Corporation Pty Ltd (‘Centrecorp’);

2. the committee must inquire into and report upon:

(i) the financial and management relationship between the Central Land Council and Centrecorp, including (without limitation) any equitable relationship between those entities,

(ii) whether taxpayers’ funds have been paid or transferred to Centrecorp and how those monies have been treated in the accounts of the Central Land Council and Centrecorp,

(iii) the nature and extent of Centrecorp’s business activities,

(iv) Centrecorp’s sources of revenue,

(v) the beneficiaries of Centrecorp business and other activities and any additional revenue it receives,

(vi) the nature and extent of Centrecorp disbursements to any charitable trusts or like entities,

(vii) the extent to which any Centrecorp beneficiaries and the Central Land Council are informed of Centrecorp’s business activities,

(viii) how Aboriginal Australians living in the Central Australia region benefit from Centrecorp’s business and charitable operations, and

(ix) all other matters considered necessary by the committee; and

3. the committee must hear evidence inter alia from:

(i) the Central Land Council,

(ii) the Auditor-General, and

(iii) Centrecorp.

One problem for the Senate’s committee is that not only has Centrecorp been the subject of a recent comprehensive investigation by the Office of Evaluation and Audit — which, while slapping it across the wrist on a couple of minor points, largely found it to be, as noted above, a “very successful private organisation”.

Another problem is that it seems that the bulk of the allegations against Centrecorp and the Central Land Council are based upon a long series of allegations promoted by the Alice Springs News .

Earlier last week the Senate committee published three of the submissions received by its inquiry – you can read them for yourself here.

The first submission, by the Commonwealth Auditor-General runs to a mere three-pages and notes that:

“As the trust deed specifically excludes CLC from receiving any benefit from the trust, CLC is not considered to have control over Centrecorp.”

That is a pretty succinct answer to the first of the Committee’s Terms of Reference – and something that anyone on reasonable enquiry would have been able to determine without wasting the Senate’s time.

The Central Land Council’s submission is extensive and notes the link between Senator Brandis’ question in Estimates of late October 2008 and early 2009 the persistent, and it says wrong-headed, coverage of the Centrecorp issue by the Alice Springs News since 1998, and the current Inquiry by the Senate Committee.

The Central Land Council notes, at page three of its submission, that:

Leaving aside for the present whether there has ever been a genuine controversy about Centrecorp, this claim that a dossier of Alice Springs News reports was a substantial part of the briefing provided to Senator Brandis, if correct, may explain how or why two Senate committees have been motivated to inquire into Centrecorp.

For that reason the multitude of factual errors and distortions evident in [the] Alice Springs News stories have been separately addressed in Appendix 2.

The CLC has appended this material in order to provide an objective measure, Hansard, to enable the Committee to see for itself how the Alice Springs News either distorts facts, or manufactures ‘facts’, in order to maintain its campaign against both Centrecorp and the CLC.

The Central Land Council refers to what it says may be evidence of the link between Senator Brandis and the campaign by the Alice Springs News against Centrecorp and the Central Land Council.

In Senate Estimates on 24 October 2008 Senator Brandis asked:

Question 126 — “Is it the case that the capital Centrecorp has used in order to acquire this large asset portfolio was seed funded from royalties paid by mining companies and other commercial entities with obligations to the central Australian Aboriginal people under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) or other relevant Commonwealth and Northern Territory statutes?”

In response the Central Land Council notes in its submission that:

Question 126 picks up a theme of the Alice Springs News first published in 1998, and repeated many times since, to the effect that Centrecorp is the beneficiary of royalties paid by mining companies…The Alice Springs News has been told repeatedly that the CLC has never paid a cent of royalties to Centrecorp, and there is not a shred of evidence to justify its allegations. It makes no difference, it [the Alice Springs News] has continued to publish this false allegation as fact.

Embedded in this allegation is the necessary inference that the CLC as:

• A Commonwealth statutory authority;
• That is governed by a representative council of 90 Aboriginal people from throughout
central Australia;
• That is independently audited annually by the Commonwealth’s Australian National Audit
Office;
• That is subject to the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act;
• That is subject to the Commonwealth Financial Management Act;
• Whose budget is approved annually by the Commonwealth Minister;
• That lodges its annual report with the Minister; and
• The Minister tables the annual report in Parliament every year;

has, in spite of all of that scrutiny and all of those controls, year after year somehow concealed a series of unlawful actions involving the wrongful transfer to Centrecorp, of large amounts of compensation funds received on behalf of traditional landowners.

Setting the proposition out in this way demonstrates how ridiculous the allegations are.

Appendix 2 of the CLC Submission examines quotes from 22 articles published in the 11 years that the Alice Springs News has written about Centrecorp and lists the CLC’s responses and comments on those articles.

The responses, because this issue goes to the heart of the CLC’s business and public accountability, focus on the repeated allegations by the Alice Springs News that Centrecorp was overly secretive and that it’s revenue and capital were sourced from mining and related royalties the responsibility of the CLC, as per these examples from April, May and August 2006 respectively:

The foundation of Centrecorp’s fabulous wealth isn’t hard work but a never ending stream of “sitdown” money (sic) created by the strike of a government pen.

…

The main source of Centrecorp’s revenue is beleved to be royalties required to be paid by resource companies operating on Aboriginal land.

…

[Centrecorp]…founded as a charitable institution to invest mining, oil and gas royalties on behalf of the Aboriginal people to whom they are due…

A single CLC response, to the publication by the Alice Springs News (online) on 19 December 2008) of questions by Senator Brandis in Estimates in December 2008, serves to highlight their concerns with these claims:

The question closely follows the spurious allegation published repeatedly by the Alice Springs News since 1998, to the effect that Centrecorp has received royalties from mining activities on Aboriginal land.

It has not.

Whether the Senate’s inquiry into the Central Land Council and Centrecorp is yet another case of going off half-cocked on the basis of inaccurate or otherwise flawed information remains to be seen.

Hearings of the Senate Committee scheduled for Alice Springs and Canberra have been postponed — no alternative dates for those Hearings have been set.

Maybe the good Senators realise that there is nothing left to inquire about and that they’ve been sold a pup?

Marion Scrymgour has never been one to hold back from a firmly held conviction – she has been fairly quiet since she stepped down to the backbench from her position as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician earlier this year but in the last week or so she has come out in strong defense of those she says have been left out of the benefits that may flow from resource developments on her homelands, the Tiwi Islands, just offshore of Darwin.

The ABC reported Scrymgour’s latest comments on 19 May:

The Member for Arafura, Marion Scrymgour, is calling on the Federal Government to investigate the Tiwi Land Council’s finances and its efforts to stimulate economic development on the islands. Marion Scrymgour says she is sick of seeing failed commercial projects on the islands, including the marine harvest fish farm and the Matilda Minerals project. Now the future of forestry projects on the Tiwi Islands, which are run by Great Southern, are in doubt after the company went into administration. Ms Scrymgour says the land council was unwise to set up the deal with Great Southern. “I know a lot of Tiwis don’t have confidence in their own land council,” she said. “They’ve never had that confidence and until the Federal Government steps in with a bit more commitment, they’re never ever going to move forward with any economic prosperity.”

And while Scrymgour might be less than happy with the conduct of the Tiwi Land Council, the ABC report of the same day from her Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, could only muddy the waters:

The Northern Territory Government has promised to help the Tiwi Islands deal with the collapse of Great Southern, which has plantations on the Tiwi Islands. The Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, says the Government is willing to pitch in. “We’ll offer any assistance we possibly can to make sure those jobs are maintained on the Tiwi Islands,” he said. He has spoken to the Tiwi Island Land Council and offered to send across a business analyst to look at options for the future of the plantation.

Don’t you just love it when the left hand and the right hand talk from the same page?

The following day the ABC reported that the Senate Committee currently investigating the Tiwi Islands resource industries was concerned that it had taken 3 days for it comprehend how payments related to the forestry program might be distributed and of a climate of ‘fear and intimidation’ on the islands:

The Senate committee inquiry, which is examining the impact of forestry operations on the islands, yesterday held an in camera session because a number of women did not want to put their names on record. The Member for Arafura, Marion Scrymgour, says the women are concerned about the environmental and social impacts of the operations. She says some women have been threatened with physical abuse if they speak out. “The fear and the intimidation is a real thing and that’s what I keep saying,” she said. “People deny that it happens.” Meanwhile, the committee has raised concerns that it has taken three days of hearings for senators to work out how payments from Great Southern’s forestry operations on the islands are distributed to islanders.

…

But Senator Trish Crossin says the land council has not adequately communicated the royalty payment process to confused islanders. “They certainly need to be getting their message out better on how that money is collected, how you can access that money and how that money is given.” Great Southern was expected to appear before the committee today but its appearance was postponed because of the company’s recent fall into voluntary receivership.

There is no shortage of shills, hucksters and flim-flam men in the NT – sometimes they sit on the Government benches, sometimes they operate businesses big or small and sometimes they walk into the offices of the largest landowners in the NT – the Aboriginal land councils that, between the four established under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT), administer nearly half of the land mass in the NT.

The Tiwi Land Council is one of the smaller land councils and controls just about everything that goes on on Melville and Bathurst Islands to the north of Darwin. The Tiwi people have always regarded themselves, for good reasons, as linguistically, culturally and politically distinct from mainland blackfellas.

Those distinctions have been good for the Tiwi Land Council – they’ve been able to avoid some of the more egregious attention paid to the activities of their mainland counterparts by governments and the often rabid bites of the mainstream press and the Tiwis have been able to get political and commercial support because of their apparent readiness to do business – even it was business of dubious value.

The deal that is currently under the Senate’s spotlight are the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council and Great Southern, the promoter of broad-acre MIS forestry schemes on the islands, which have seen vast swathes of virgin tropical savanna transformed into a monocrop of the fast growing Acacia mangium.

Crikey readers will be familiar with the controversy that arose around the Tiwi Land Council’s conduct in relation to the contentious 99-year lease deal over the largest township on the Tiwi islands, Nguiu, from reports from reports in Crikey here and here.

Crikey has also reported on the Tiwi forestry concerns before here and here.

In 2007 the ABC’s Background Briefing broadcast the most thorough media report on the timber industry on the Tiwi Islands to date.

Wendy Carlisle noted that the proposal had some serious problems from the start:

…in the ’90s, former Territory Chief Minister, Paul Everingham’s company, Sylvatech, restarted the dream. It was a grand vision of riches for all. They sought and gained under new Federal environmental laws, permission to clear 28,000 hectares of native forest. But there was no independent environmental impact assessment and no public consultation process
…
The reports also claimed that there would be a nett greenhouse benefit from replacing the forests with the acacias. Yet there was no reckoning with 9-1/2-million tonnes of greenhouse gases that would be emitted by clearing the forest in the first place. Or that they would be replaced with the acacias that would then be harvested for their pulp.

And an important, some say vital, part of the Sylvatech deal was that it would get to sell off the existing Cypress Pine plantations and Eucalypt logs felled by the clearing of the plantation coupes.

Wendy Carlisle spoke to Professor Brendan Mackey Director, ANU Wild Country Research and Policy Hub about the forests of the Tiwi islands. Mackey gives a clear indication of the importance of the forest cleared on Melville Island.

Brendan Mackey: That’s right, Northern Australia, taken as a whole, is one of the most intact natural areas left in the tropical world. Certainly most of the areas that are what we call tropical woodland and the eucalypt forests on Tiwi Islands, fall in that category. They’re not closed rainforest like you find in the Amazon, they have been severely degraded just about everywhere else in the world, and really Northern Australia, and this is the main point we’re making in our report on Northern Australia, is it represents one of the last chances to do something sensible in a tropical woodland environment.
Wendy Carlisle: Your report looks at all the top of Australia, from Cape York right across to the Kimberley, so in terms of the importance of the Tiwi forest, how significant are they in that huge sweep?
Brendan Mackey: They are the most productive, biologically productive forests in Northern Australia. They have the best rainfall and the best soil, so they really are the jewel in the crown.

Background Briefing again:

Wendy Carlisle: In 2003 Sylvatech and the Tiwi Land Council began exporting timber from the old pines, and the best of the timber from the cleared forests to China. There were wild estimates of the value of the deal to the Tiwis.

ABC News report: It’s a deal that’s worth about $1.5-million a year for the Tiwis who will fill more than half of the expected 250 jobs. Canberra says everyone’s a winner.
…
Wendy Carlisle: Over the next four years, seven barges of Red Tiwi sailed for China. But it was a fiasco. Instead of being worth millions, the shipments made a loss of over $700,000.

In 2005 Sylvatech was bought out by Great Southern Plantations – which collapsed in spectacular fashion nine days ago.

Tiwi Land Council Secretary John Hicks and the Tiwi Land Council appear to be comfortable with timber and other resource companies that fail. As The Australian’s Paul Toohey reported, Hicks told him that:

…the Tiwis had seen their forestry projects fall apart eight times in the past 30 years. They believe they can ride out the collapse of Great Southern, which acquired the project from Sylvatech in 2005.

“The pattern of these receiverships is not something we’re unfamiliar with,” Mr Hicks said. “Great Southern has far more impact upon us (than previous failures); however, Great Southern don’t own the trees. They’re owned by 2700 mum-and-dad investors and Great Southern managed the forests on their behalf.”

In December 2008 the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts commissioned an “Inquiry into Forestry and Mining operations on the Tiwi Islands“, the major focus of which has been on the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council, Sylvatech and, since 2005, Great Southern Plantations.

To date the Committee has received thirty-four submissions. Like all such inquiries the submissions range from the self-serving to the irrelevant, overly long, tedious or just wrong-headed.

But there are a few real gems, including that of Professor Stephen Garnett of the School for Environmental Research at the Charles Darwin University. Garnett points to a recent research paper that indicates the Tiwi may have been dudded big-time and would have been better off leaving their precious tropical savanna untouched rather than signing up to a tax rort:

The paper estimated that the Tiwi Islands forests that were logged by Great Southern Plantations in 2008 could have been worth up to $110 million under a REDD scheme under the Gold Standard of the voluntary carbon market.
…we recommend the inquiry determine why Tiwi Islanders appear to have been denied the opportunity to benefit from REDD opportunities…We think this is because of the way in which Great Southern finance their operations – that the tax savings available under a Managed Investment Scheme could only be attained if the forests were felled.

Dr Ken Eldridge has degrees in botany and forestry and, with more than 50 years experience of research and development in forest genetics and tree breeding, is well qualified to comment on the Tiwi forestry issues.

His submission expressed his personal opinions, and not those of the IFA or of CSIRO:

My impression of the Tiwi plantations, having seen industrial plantations of many species in several countries, was that ‘GSL have achieved good survival and weed control, and the trees were healthy with little damage from insects or fungi. However, stem and branch form was not good, many trees having forks, crooked stems or coarse branches. Such poor form is common when genetically unimproved ‘wild’ seed is used in Acacia mangium plantations elsewhere.’ Such form deficiencies reduce the return at harvest due to reduced yield and the extra cost of delimbing and debarking, prior to chipping for export at age 8 to 10 years.

In other words – they are planting and growing low grade seed-stock that will give poor returns.

Another of the very interesting submissions to the Committee is that of Peter Robertson, who for several years while living in Darwin and working for an environment NGO undertook investigations into the operation of the Tiwi (Melville Island) plantation project.

Robertson makes several important points about the administrative and corporate arrangements, sales and returns to the Tiwi, including that in addition to the MIS proponent Great Southern Ltd, and project ‘partner’ the Tiwi Land Council:

…there are at least four other corporate entities involved in
the Tiwi Island woodchip plantation project:
- Pirntubula Ltd
- Pentarch Forest Products Ltd;
- PenSyl Ltd; and
- Stratus Shipping Ltd.
There is a fundamental lack of transparency about the legal commercial agreements and contracts
that exist between the companies involved in the exploitation of the Tiwi forests and plantations.

…

There is far too little readily available information about these companies or the project’s
financial structure showing how much income each is making out of clearing the Island’s forests
and subsequent shipping and sale of high quality logs, or how much each will make out of the
woodchip export part of the project when it commences.
…
‘Commercial confidentially’ cannot be used as an excuse to deprive the Island’s landowners and
communities of clear and understandable information about the commercial involvement of these
companies in the exploitation of the Island’s natural resources, and the risks involved.

In relation to the valuation of the land used by Great Southern Robertson notes that:

There are two crucial issues here:
(a) how was the leasehold value of the Tiwi ‘Aboriginal Freehold’ land for plantation
establishment arrived at;
(b) how does it compare with leasehold land valuations for plantations elsewhere?
The Tiwi Islanders are being paid “~$17/hectare per annum (+ 2% of net harvest proceeds) for
plantation ready land and ~$1/ha pa for land that is not plantation ready”

There is ample evidence that this amount is a fraction of the amount landowners are paid by
plantation companies in southern Australia. An ANU research paper summarised lease payments
across Australia and found that they ranged from $75/ha/pa up to $300/ha/pa. The average is
around $150/ha/pa – or nearly 10 times the amount Tiwi TO’s are being paid. These are
already old figures and the current rates are likely to be much higher still.

Concerning the shipment and sale of logs clear-felled from the forestry site Roberston says:

According to GSL and the Tiwi Land Council, under the existing commercial arrangement the
Tiwi Traditional Owners will receive “2% of net harvest proceeds” from the eventual sale of
acacia mangium woodchips from Melville Island.
This means that only after all the other corporate parties involved – GSL and its tax minimisation
investors, Pentarch, Stratus Shipping, etc – have taken their cut of the income and profits will the
Traditional Owners receive a potentially miniscule residual income.
In fact, based on the log sale fiasco, it is quite plausible that they will end up receiving nothing at
all, especially if there is a fall in the overseas commodity price for woodchips, which is entirely
foreseeable.

And local MLA Marion Scrymgour, never one to suffer a fool gladly, has been concerned about the operations of the Tiwi Land Council for some time. As she said in a letter to yesterdays NT News:

There are many other things I have to say about the Tiwi Land Council and its governance but I will leave that for my submission to the Senate Committee.

Watch this space.

Kanpanparlala

Kanpanparlala call – Bird Observers Club of Australia

The Crested Bellbird, Oreoica gutturalis, is found throughout the arid zone that makes up much of Australia away from the eastern coastal strip. Males are  unmistakable, with a ‘punk-like’ crest, while females and immature birds are less distinctly coloured than males, without the black breast colouring and having a smaller, unraised black crest.

The Crested Bellbird is endemic to mainland Australia and is relatively common west of the Great Dividing Range, in the south of tropical northern Australia, and through South Australia to the west coast of Western Australia. They are found in acacia, particularly mulga, shrublands, eucalypt woodlands, spinifex and chenopod (saltbush) plains or dunes.

One peculiar, and as yet unexplained, habit that Kanpanparlala has when nesting is that their nests often have live, hairy caterpillars placed around the rim. Some possible explanations are that the adults gather them as a food storage for the sitting bird or as a defence for the nest.

While it can seen without any great degree of difficulty throughout its range, it is a bird more commonly heard than seen. It has a very distinctive call, from which its Warlpiri name of Kanpanparlala is an onomatopoeic derivation.

There are many reports of Kanpanparlala’s significance to Aboriginal groups across Australia. One of the earliest references I have found is from the early explorer and amateur anthropologist Herbert Basedow. Basedow has only recently has been accorded due regard for his work – notably in this exhibition of his wonderful photographs at the National Museum of Australia that will tour regional Museums and galleries through to the end of 2010.

Basedow was trained as a geologist but quickly became a skilled ethnographic observer and photographer. In his Anthropological Notes Made on the South Australian Government North-west Prospecting Expedition into the north -west of the then unified South Australia and the Northern Territory he notes that:

Many native words have a direct origin in their formation. They are imitative of birds. express characteristic actions, or imply similarity to other familiar objects. The bell-bird (Oreoica petroica) is called “ban-ban-balelle,” the value and distribution of the separate syllables of this word corresponding to the never-ceasing call of that bird.

And over at Lasseteria, ‘the Lasseter encyclopeadia’ dedicated to the legacy of that ill-fatedI found the following notes from Basedow:

The call of the Crested Bellbird as recorded by Basedow on the 1903 Government North West Prospecting expedition; “SATURDAY, JUNE. 27TH. We are up with the melodious call of the bell bird, (Oreoica cristata). The rhythm of the principal call, regardless of its several variations in fullness and quality might be represented numerically by 1; 2. – 1,2,3. And just this characteristic has appealed to the Aluridjas who call the bird “ban-ban-balele”.

There are several Aboriginal names for the bird, mostly based on the rhythm of the call such as, ‘Burn-burn-boolala’, ‘Pan-pan-boolala’, ‘Pan-pan-panella’, etc, the Pitjantjara name the bird ‘Panpanpalala’ and Bunbunbililila. The Bellbird intruded on Coote’s solitude during his enforced stay at Ayers Rock, “…now there came that familiar ‘ klonk-ker-lonk-ker-lonkylonk’ – the bellbird was commencing his mournful Angelus. Soon it would be dusk and their calls more frequent”.

Basedow is apparently the only writer who mentions the name Ban-ban-balele until Idriess titles chapter 25 in Lasseter’s Last Ride, “Ban-ban-balele”. This chapter recounts Lasseter and a small band of Aboriginals setting out across the desert to search for yams. “As they stepped out on the desert proper, behind them a bell sounded, sweet, pure, and lingering. The liquid notes rang out again. “Ban ban belele!” The bell bird seemed to be calling them back. Instant gloom settled on the tribe”.

I haven’t tracked the different specific scientific names (O. petroica, O. cristata) or the etymology of the various Aboriginal spellings and pronunciations that Basedow and others use.

In 2001, as part of a series  examining Australian sacred sites the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Radio program The Spirit of Things, presented by Rachael Kohn, she talked to visitors and traditional owners of Uluru in central Australia. (The references to “Language” are to the words of Mark Kuliitya as translated by Megan Hatton – nowadays I trust the ABC would give the language speaker both an appropriate credit and also a full translation of his words.)

Amongst the many tour groups which operate out of Ayer’s Rock Resort, Anangu Tours provides a unique cultural experience, pairing a traditional owner with a translator. Starting at five in the morning to catch the sunrise over Uluru, the Liru walk takes you through bushland around the base of the rock, and with Mark, and his translator Megan, the story of Wati Lunkara and PanPanPaLaLa, unfolds.

…

Megan Hatton: And that’s the bird’s name, PanPanPaLaLa. The crested bellbird in English. So you might hear him singing later on. But in creation times of course he’s Wati PanPanPaLaLa, the crested bellbird man.

(LANGUAGE)

Megan Hatton: Mark’s saying that PanPanPaLaLa then in creation times was out hunting, and he was hunting for emus, you can see the emu footprints just there. Now he speared that emu from a distance, and that spear with that barb on the end gets stuck in that animal, and Mark said that PanPanPaLaLa followed that emu all the way to a place where there’s a water hole. Then he has to catch up to that animal, and with his club, it’s one swift blow to the back of the neck, like that, and that’s how you finish the animal off. Mark says that’s grandfather’s law.

(LANGUAGE)

Megan Hatton: OK, so Mark says right there then, that’s where PanPanPaLaLa cooked up that emu meat. He would have prepared that animal and cooked him the same way emu meat is still prepared and cooked, still to this day.

But Mark says, once the animal was cooked, PanPanPaLaLa carried that emu meat all the way to Uluru, but he approached Uluru on the southern side of the rock and Mark says down at ground level PanPanPaLaLa made himself a windbreak, he made himself a big fire and he had all that emu meat there, chopped up into pieces. But PanPanPaLaLa was exhausted after hunting all day so he lay down beside the fire and fell fast asleep.

(LANGUAGE)

Megan Hatton: OK, so Mark says that PanPanPaLaLa is fast asleep by the fire there. Wati Lunkara’s rested now, he’s climbed back down Uluru and he’s decided to walk around this way this time, looking for footprints again. He’s walking around, walking around; all of a sudden he sees these footprints and he’s like Hey, I know this person, this is PanPanPaLaLa, the crested bellbird man.

So he follows, follows, those footprints right into PanPanPaLaLa’s camp to find PanPanPaLaLa sound asleep. He tries to wake him up: ‘Come on man, get up, get up! It’s me Lunkara. I’ve been walking all that way from Chichiara to come and be your friend. Get up, we’ll have a yarn, come on!’

Rachael Kohn: That’s Megan Hatton, telling the story of Wati Lunkara, the blue tongue lizard man, and PanPanPaLaLa, just one of the Aboriginal stories that provides a spiritual explanation for the extraordinary markings on Australia’s most unusual geological formation, Uluru.

Well according to the story, PanPanPaLaLa found out that Wati Lunkara had his emu meet and he decided to smoke him out of his hiding place at the top of the Uluru.

Megan Hatton: Mark says that PanPanPaLaLa blew on that fire stick then, got a flame happening, and all those soft grasses at the base of the rock there, PanPanPaLaLa set them all on fire. Slowly, slowly that fire built up, the flames, the smoke, the fumes, and that’s what that white stain is on the side of the rock still to this day. Mark says to the right hand side of that white stain you can see those footprints climbing up and down that rock too, from when he was carrying that stolen meat up there.

For the Warlpiri people of the Tanami Desert – to the north of the country that Basedow travelled though, the Crested Bellbird is know as ‘Kanpanparlala‘, or more widely, ‘Pakupaku‘. The Warlpiri Dictionary entry for Pakupaku is:

Pakupaku ngulaju jirripirdi jarnpakurlangu. Ranpuranpu-wangka kalu. Jarnpaku karla wangkami kuja: “Yalinyalu pakakarra!”

The crested bellbird belongs to the kurdaitcha man. It calls out loudly. It say this to the kurdaitcha: “Kill that one there!”

Another reference states:

The “pakupaku” bird of a ‘kurdaitcha’ man calls out like when it chirps incessantly loud and clear. It goes, “Pakpakpalala, pakapakpalala, yaljarn-pakakarra, yaljarn-pakakarra.”

There are several other bird species associated with the Kurdaitcha-men and it is well known that the shoes that Kurdaitcha men wear are made from Emu down feathers. I look forward to finding out more about this and other bird species over the next few months as I travel through the southern NT and South Australia researching my book on Aboriginal bird knowledge, to be published by CSIRO Publishing in 2010.

Got a story about the Crested Bellbird or any other Australian bird? Send a comment!

Introduction

Good afternoon – I am pleased to be here in the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people.

Ethno-ornithology is a part of the broader and rapidly developing discipline of ethno-biology, which will be familiar, at least in part, to many of you at this conference.

Notwithstanding the quantity and undoubted quality of the work by Australian ornithologists, Aboriginal ornithological knowledge has largely been ignored by European science – in this respect Australia is an ornithological terra nullius – an ‘empty land’.

Almost without exception, none of the Handbook, the Atlases, field guides and the scientific and popular ornithological literature contains any meaningful reference to Aboriginal knowledge of birds.

The legal fiction of terra nullius was finally laid to rest on 2^nd June 1992 when the High Court of Australia delivered its decision in Eddie Mabo’s case[1]. In that case the High Court held that Australia was not an ‘empty land’ and recognized prior Aboriginal ownership, continuing management responsibilities and attachment to land.

As the High Court of Australia has recently confirmed, in many parts of Australia the “tide of history”[2]has washed away Aboriginal claims to and knowledge of land in many parts of the country – at least from a European legal perspective.

However, in those areas where the invasion and conquest were less thorough, Aboriginal ownership of land has survived and been recognized by Governments and the Courts. Much Aboriginal knowledge and law has survived and continues to be applied on a day-to-day basis.

This is particularly so in the north, centre and west of the country, where vast tracts of land are owned by Aboriginal people. In many other parts of the country Aboriginal peoples, even where they do not own land according to Australian law, seek to assert their traditional knowledge and law for lands that they, in Aboriginal law, claim as their responsibility.

The tentative recognition of the value of Aboriginal scientific knowledge

In 1949 the anthropologist Donald Thomson, after many years working with Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land, described local knowledge of the land, plants and animals of the region and their classificatory systems:

” There is nothing artificial about this systematic classification. It is entirely that of the natives themselves and shows a critical, almost scientific appreciation of the environment and its resources. The accuracy with which an Arnhem Land hunter could name a given association according to its botanical composition, and the food supply, woods for spears and other purposes, as well as resins and fibre plants that it would yield at any season of the year was astonishing.”[3]

Aboriginal scientific knowledge of the land and its resources are belatedly being accepted as valid and useful tools for land and resource management. The most recognized area of Aboriginal scientific knowledge is Aboriginal botany, where there has been an increasing focus on the documentation and application of Aboriginal knowledge for research on new foods and drugs.

Other examples include the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which has recently launched an indigenous weather website and the contribution of Bill Harney, a senior Wardaman traditional owner from the “lightning” country west of Katherine in the Northern Territory, who has recently co-authored a book on his astronomical knowledge – illustrating his knowledge of both the land and the night sky.

Aboriginal knowledge of birds in mainstream literature

It at best regrettable and at worst unforgivable that the most complete references to Australian Aboriginal ornithology are found in Gould’s Handbook of 1865 – published 138 years ago.

Too many recent works that refer to Aboriginal knowledge of birds merely contain a list of names in language – there is little interpretation or deeper analysis of that knowledge. Even HANZAB, the major Australian ornithological reference work, disappoints. For example, Appendix 3 to Volume 1 of HANZAB contains 63 “Aboriginal Names” for the Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae, 36 for the Black Swan Cygnus atratus and 43 for the Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa – all valuable resource species for Aboriginal people across Australia.

But these bare lists are presented without any meaningful context – there is no identification of the language group for each name, the location of the original reference or the identity of the original informant – just a list of names from across the country. This may not all be the fault of the HANZAB editors – an examination of the references from which the lists were drawn shows that many of those reports failed to show these details – early volumes of The Emu and other journals contain a number of articles entitled “List of Aboriginal Bird Names” or similar – only rarely is there a reference to a location or language group.

Changes in Aboriginal land management – a role for ornithologists?

We now know of the value of birds as indicators of ecosystem diversity, environmental health and sustainable land management and use.

In recent years, largely through the persistence of Aboriginal people and their representative organizations, Aboriginal people are increasingly exercising or asserting their traditional land management rights and responsibilities. This is particularly so in the north, west and centre of the country for reasons discussed earlier. The challenges they face are immense and often they are expected to manage vast tracts of land with inadequate technical, professional and practical experience, support and resources.

Aboriginal people and their organizations have responded to the challenges of managing their lands by developing responses that match their immediate needs, unique challenges and considerable responsibilities. Increasingly, Aboriginal landowners are looking to integrate western science with their own land management principles and practices – not as clients of western science – but as partners in collaborative and cooperative arrangements.

What ethno-ornithological information is available?

Ethnobiological study is by its nature cross-disciplinary. Notwithstanding the lack of qualitative research on Aboriginal ornithology, there is a considerable amount of extrinsic information, i.e. non-ornithological, available from other sources. This material can often be found in the related disciplines of anthropology, linguistics and history.

Anthropological references include, for example, the earlier work by Donald Thomson, Norman B. Tindale and by the Berndt’s in northern Australia. More recently Julie-Ann Waddy at Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Betty Meehan in north-central Arnhem Land have produced valuable ethno-biological research. Another source is the anthropological and historical material contained in submissions and evidence presented to the Courts in claims under various Land Rights legislation and the more recent Native Title claims.

Linguistic material includes the extensive vernacular material produced by Literacy Centres throughout the Northern Territory for use in bilingual education in remote communities, language-specific work produced through Aboriginal agencies such as the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AITSIS) and the vocabulary and dictionary work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

The journals and reports by early explorers and historians can also be of value. These can range from works by individual explorers, early pastoralists and the reports of the government sponsored exploratory expeditions conducted from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The quality and quantity of this material is patchy and can vary depending on individual preference and the overall purpose of each undertaking. The records of birds shot for food as exploratory parties travelled through country can also be a useful source of presence/absence data.

Where to from here?

Aboriginal people are acutely aware of the value of their knowledge and the need to protect it from unauthorised use. Increasingly, this is reflected in the terms of agreements between Aboriginal people and researchers. These agreements typically govern access to land, compliance with cultural and community standards and protection of copyright and other intellectual property. Such issues, while new to many researchers, are in most cases no more onerous than the conditions placed upon research by university ethics committees and similar supervisory bodies.

There are no established Australian protocols for ethno-biological research and, in order to provide some overall framework for ethno-biological research I believe that following issues warrant attention:

• development of a set of widely applicable principles and protocols for ethno-biological research;
• identification of methodologies for studying animal/people interactions;
• treatment/uses/sources of interdisciplinary data;
• encouragement/training for ethno-biological researchers and students;
• improved collaboration between ethno-biological and Aboriginal people and organizations; and;
• identification and prioritization of research objectives in Australian ethno-biology.

Some areas of application for ethno-biological research in ornithology could include:

• life histories;
• breeding biology;
• population ecology;
• distribution and habitat;
• migratory studies – particularly in relation to the East-Asian Flyway and flight paths of these migrating birds across inland Australia; and
• develop better approaches for the incorporation of Aboriginal observations and data into mainstream research.

We still know remarkably little about the Australian avifauna. In many parts of the Australian continent the landscape has changed so much that Aboriginal knowledge may be of little real value, particularly where such knowledge has been washed away and people alienated from their land.

But it is in the vast tracts of land for which Aboriginal people known have direct responsibility for land management that the real opportunities and challenges for the application of Aboriginal ornithology lie.

I am pleased that ‘People and Birds’ and ‘Birds and Landscapes’ are well-represented themes at this conference. I also hope that the AOC to be held in New Zealand in 2005 will develop these themes – particularly in relation to the incorporation of Aboriginal and Maori knowledge of birds into mainstream ornithology.

Thank you.

[2] Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria, High Court of Australia, 12 December 2002.

[3] Thomson, D. F. (1949) Arnhem Land: Explorations Among an Unknown People. Part II: The People of Blue Mud Bay. The Geographical Journal 113: 1.

Sooty Shearwater, Puffinus griseus

For too long, western scientists have either willfully ignored indigenous knowledge of Australia’s landscapes, flora and fauna or damned it as ‘unscientific’.

This has condemned indigenous knowledge to a kind of biological terra nullius where the facts of Aboriginal ownership and management of and responsibility for land are ignored and western land management paradigms have prevailed.

The number, variety, capacity and quality of Aboriginal land management groups across Australia wasn’t evident to me until I attended the inaugural Indigenous Land & Sea Management Conference in central Australia in April 2005 where over 400 indigenous delegates revealed the diverse nature of their work – from protecting water points from feral camels in the desert, rescuing turtles from ‘ghost nets’ in the Gulf of Carpentaria to protecting traditional mutton-birding grounds in Tasmania from invasive weeds.

There’s an increasing recognition of the value of Aboriginal joint-management of the national park estate in the states and the Commonwealth has long been a leader in this area. But it’s the scientific disciplines that have been slowest to recognise the merits of indigenous knowledge.

Ornithology, the scientific study of birds, is a discipline where Australian scientists have contributed world-class research for many years. Birdwatching is tremendously popular as a hobby and there’s an extensive body scientific and popular literature on birds.

When I first started researching Aboriginal bird knowledge in the late 1990s I expected to find at least a few recent references but, to my profound disappointment, the best references I could find in one volume were in a book written by the father of Australian ornithology, John Gould, in 1865! Since then, Australian ornithology has largely ignored Aboriginal knowledge.

At the time of European invasion, over 250 Aboriginal language groups, each with its own set of bird knowledge lived on Australia. While this linguistic and cultural richness has been much diminished post-invasion, many languages and cultures remain in daily use and, as my research has revealed, contain rich veins of bird knowledge.

I work in the (re)emergent area of ethnoornithology, which is about what people know of and how they use birds, and within this discipline there is an increasing recognition of the value of indigenous bird knowledge as a tool that can fill in some of the yawning gaps in our knowledge of birds and provide a useful tool for bird conservation and landscape management.

Ethnoornithology incorporates mainstream ornithological techniques with tools from the social science disciplines to better understand and apply indigenous knowledge.

Internationally, disciplinary peak bodies, the academy, government and non-government agencies are slowly coming to realise the value of indigenous bird knowledge as a complementary tool for bird conservation but also as a means to provide insights into cultural beliefs and traditional practices.

One excellent example of cooperation between indigenous landowners and scientists concerns the trans-Pacific migrant the Sooty Shearwater Puffinus griseus, known in Australia as the Muttonbird and to New Zealand’s Maori as the Titi.

Aboriginal people living on the Tasmanian offshore islands still harvest muttonbirds as a cash crop, as do the Maori. In Australia, Aboriginal owners of the islands are working with European scientists and land managers, to ensure that the harvest is conducted sustainably and to ameliorate threats from feral rats and invasive weeds to the Muttonbird grounds.

In New Zealand the Maori custodians of the Titi grounds have long worked with European scientists and conservation managers on population fluctuations, harvest rates and tracking the cross-Pacific travels of this global migrant. Both of these projects highlight and respect the role of traditional knowledge and uses of the birds and are good illustrations of the value of scientists and indigenous landowners working together as equal partners – each contributing specialist knowledge and skills to reach an outcome that increases the pool of available knowledge about the Muttonbird and provides enhanced conservation and management outcomes.

There are many other examples in Australia and across the globe and I hope that the Working on Country program of the Australian government can assist with the important and overdue recognition of the contribution that Australia’s indigenous peoples can make to practical conservation efforts.

If you have a story about indigenous or local birds knowledge from your part of Australia or the world I and others would love to hear it – register and then post your story here!

I will document bird-related knowledge and projects in a book I am writing for publication by CSIRO Publishing for release in 2009 and I would welcome any suggestions, contacts or news of local initiative by email to BirdKnowledge@gmail.com.

Originally published in the daily email edition of Crikey.com on Thursday, 7 June 2007.