WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

medical examination before being sent south for schooling (Jebb and Allbrook 2009
citing Hunter 1988).
Isolation at Bungarun varied from a few weeks to forty years. For those taken from
country and family, the experience could be traumatic and for some Aboriginal people
remains a difficult experience to discuss (Jebb and Allbrook 2009). Many tried to
escape and some were successful. Contact between different language groups at
Bungarun resulted in conflict as well as friendly interaction and the exchange of
information. The ability to continue certain cultural practices was central to the
Bungarun experience. Corroborees and traditional singing were encouraged as were
art and craft production including painting, the carving of boab nuts, basket making
and the production of wooden artefacts (Jebb and Allbrook 2009).
The Bungarun orchestra became an important part of the social life at the institution.
Started during the Second World War, it grew to 40 violins, six banjos, one cello and
one cornet. The orchestra played complex pieces of classical music including
Beethoven and Mozart and contemporary dance music. Concerts were given for
patients, and during the 1950s and 60s to audiences composed largely of people from
visiting ships (Jebb and Allbrook 2009).
While Bungarun was not the only total isolation facility built for the segregation and
treatment of Aboriginal people with leprosy, it is the only facility of this type now
extant in Australia. Little remains of the Channel Island and East Arm leprosaria in
the Northern Territory or the Fantome Island leprosarium, located near Palm Island in
north Queensland.
The Channel Island leprosarium was commissioned by the Commonwealth
Government to treat the increasing numbers of leprosy sufferers in northern Australia.
A quarantine station was established on Channel Island in 1884, but it was not until
1931 that the place began to be used as an isolation facility for leprosy sufferers
(NTHAC 2002). By the end of the decade, 129 patients were isolated on Channel
Island, including Aboriginal people transported from the Kimberley (Parry 2003). The
place was closed in 1955. Records show that 443 patients were sent to Channel Island
during its operation, and at least 142 of those patients are buried on the island
(HCWA 2000). Channel Island was replaced by the East Arm leprosarium, also
located in the vicinity of Darwin Harbour (Parry 2003). Patients at East Arm were
cared for by the Sisters of our Lady of the Sacred Heart (Kiely media release 2008).
In the 1970s, it was renamed the East Arm Leprosy Hospital, recognising the success
of the treatments developed by Dr John Hargrave, whose achievements were also
recognised internationally. The East Arm facility was destroyed by a cyclone in 1974.
Patients were kept in nearby makeshift premises until it was decided to close down
the leprosarium permanently in 1982. Today, very little remains of the East Arm
facility (Parry 2003).
Fantome Island leprosarium was opened in 1940 as a non-denominational facility to
detain and treat Aboriginal people with the disease. On the closing of Fantome Island
in 1973 the property was burned and little remains today (Parsons 2009).
In striking contrast, much of the leprosarium facility at Bungarun is still intact. The
buildings and landscape elements of Bungarun, together with the area of the former
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