Elder Speaks Out Against Native Title Claim

This is the small town of Toobeah, which I have spoken about before, on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. It’s nearly 400 kilometres southwest of Brisbane located in the Goondiwindi Region. Earlier this year, this small town emerged as the centre of one of the latest fights over Indigenous land rights with the State Government planning to transfer the 220ha Toobeah Reserve to the Bigambul Aboriginal Corporation, the BAC. I was actually contacted by someone from the BAC, or at least someone claiming to be from the BAC, but I’ll get to that soon.

First, I’d just like to show you a map of traditional Aboriginal tribes. This is the AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia, noting they do note that it is not suitable for native title or other land claims, but let’s take a look just so we all understand the basic tribal boundaries in the Toobeah region. This is the Bigambul region which I mentioned before. This is Goondiwindi, and Toobeah is approximately here. The point I’d like to make is that it borders with the fourth largest Indigenous nation the Kamilaroi, also known as the Gamilaroi. You may have heard of the Aboriginal Australian rapper The Kid Laroi who identifies as a Gamilaroi man. I presume that’s where he got his name from. I only know about him because my kids listen to his music.

Keep that name Gamilaroi in mind, because news released today about Toobeah in the Courier Mail: “Indigenous Elder Rex McGrady speaks out against Native Title land grab”. It turns out Mr McGrady is a Gamilaroi Elder and he’s raised concerns about the Bigambul Aboriginal Corporation taking over land at Toobeah.

Okay, so clearly it’s not just one Aboriginal group who claim some sort of connection with this area. But as I said earlier, somebody from the Bigambul people emailed me earlier asking me to show this website, which I will out of fairness: Toobeah Truth Telling, created by the Bigambul Native Title Aboriginal Corporation. They have created a downloadable PDF which I will show some of here.

Toobeah Truth Telling: Let’s Yarn. So they have made a claim on the land coloured purple and pink, Lot 1 and Lot 10. They also note that there is no official “Toobeah Common” as reported in the media. They reject that the State Government is giving away 95% of the town and state that Toobeah district is around 1,125 km2, the 210ha Reserve for Travelling Stock and Camping is only 0.018% of the land mass. The local park is not part of the application or transfer. I guess the confusion comes from the fact that the town is just a small dot on the map, while the actual Toobeah district is much bigger, so I guess it depends on how you frame it with regards to the 95% figure.

The claim that Bigambul will shut the gates and the public won’t be able to access it for camping and fishing is apparently not true. The reserves’ current lawful use is for travelling stock and camping associated with such. People have been riding trail bikes and four-wheel drives across the property unlawfully and damaging the river banks and riparian vegetation over the years. I wanted to check that claim that it was unlawful, so I checked up on the Goondiwindi Regional Council website, Toobeah Reserve Information. Under the question, “Can locals still have access to the Toobeah Reserve?”, they write, “The current purpose of the Toobeah Reserve is for camping and watering in relation to travelling stock only. Members of the public do not currently have lawful access for recreational activities, such as swimming, fishing or motorbike riding on the Reserve.” So it seems like locals have never had lawful access to the reserve except for travelling stock only. That’s not to say locals haven’t been using it for recreational activity, but apparently it’s not legal, at least according to the council.

The claim that this is just an Aboriginal Land grab is not true in their eyes. The claim the community won’t have access to water is not true. They claim that residents were consulted. The claim that the Aboriginal Corporation is based in Brisbane is not true, they’re based in Goondiwindi in Marshall Street. Nobody will be losing their stock routes.

Anyway, in the name of fairness, I told the guy that I would show you their website, which I have done. And yes, their address is in Goondiwindi, not Brisbane. I certainly don’t want to intentionally spread misinformation. I’m not here to take sides. Obviously, there’s some division even within the Aboriginal community over this as Gamilaroi Elder Rex McGrady is opposed to the land transfer. According to the Goodiwindi Argus, the Ombudsman has been sent in to investigate the Toobeah Reserve land transfer.

So what do you think? My feeling is that I don’t like that we’re all fighting over land here in Australia. It’s something that you’d expect warring nations to do, not people of the same nationality.

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn