Sandy BLAIR & Diana JAMES
The remote pastoral landscapes and stock routes of northern Australia have strong associations and social values for local Indigenous communities and Traditional Owners. On the northern pastoral frontier, many Aboriginal people lived for part of each year in camps at pastoral outstations, established on or near their country to access much-needed labour for stock work. Surviving station camps were often the base from which, Indigenous people rebuilt their communities during the homelands movement of the 1960s and 70s. Traditional Owners have also sought and gained Native Title Rights over many of these abandoned pastoral holdings.
Some of these areas of Aboriginal land have now been included within National Parks and Indigenous Protected Areas, with ongoing ownership and management by Indigenous people through joint-management arrangements, as in Kakadu National Park, and Indigenous Ranger programs. In other cases, Aboriginal people have developed heritage tourism businesses based on the cultural heritage assets. Future use and management of remote pastoral infrastructure on Aboriginal land will be largely determined by these emerging community aspirations.
This paper traces the history of Indigenous people's association, often over several generations, with the frontier stations and stock routes of northern Australia. Aboriginal people had strong and ongoing social and cultural connections to the changing cultural landscapes of the Top End. Those cattle stations that have survived in the harsh environment are often a centre of intense memory and colourful stories of Aboriginal people working with stock animals, social interaction and station life. Both the seasonal nature and strong travel ethos of the frontier cattle industry suited Indigenous people's traditional patterns of movement and ongoing participation in ceremony. This paper explores the zones of cooperation and connection, as well as areas of conflict, which typified cultural interaction on the cattle stations and buffalo camps of the remote northern pastoral frontier.
The paper draws on two case studies: the historical pastoral landscapes of the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, and the Canning Stock Route of Western Australia, now an iconic four-wheel-drive tourism route. Current research projects being undertaken at the Australian National University in these two case study areas provide much of the research data for this paper.
Finally, the paper looks at the issues and challenges in managing these pastoral landscapes and routes in ways that reflect their varied natural and cultural values and in the context of Aboriginal land ownership and aspirations for the future.