WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

In summary, within the context of the analysis topic of settlement, neither Fitzroy
Crossing nor Derby demonstrate town characteristics of significance at the national
level. The layout of Broome is not exemplary in terms of town planning and the
townscape has changed in response to tourism. The corrugated iron architecture in
Broome has some potential rarity value, however it lacks the ability to demonstrate
this style of architecture because of the extent and nature of modern redevelopment or
adaption. In this case, lack of integrity is a sufficient reason to conclude that Broome
is below threshold under criterion (d).
On the basis of current evidence the town settlements of Derby, Fitzroy Crossing
and Broome are below threshold under criterion (d) for their importance in
demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural place or cultural
environment.
The Fitzroy River (Martuwarra/Mardoowarra) 'river of life': the meeting place of
four contiguous and distinctive traditions of the Rainbow Serpent
The Fitzroy River, known to its Aboriginal Traditional Owners as
Martuwarra/Mardoowarra, 'River of Life' is one of the longest and largest river
systems in tropical north Australia (Larson and Alexandridis 2009). The cultural
systems and languages of ten Aboriginal groups whose traditional country principally
falls within the Fitzroy catchment area include the Kija, Wurla, Andajin, Ngarinyin,
Gooniyandi, Bunuba, Unggumi, Walmajarri, Nyikina and Warrwa people. According
to Pannell (2009), these Aboriginal Traditional Owners continue to maintain
traditions and observe the ways of life intrinsic to an Indigenous riverine-based sociocultural
system, which the anthropological record indicates is now rare, threatened or
no longer apparent as intact in other parts of Aboriginal Australia.
Traditions associated with the Rainbow Serpent or Water Snake acknowledged as
having been once pervasive in Aboriginal Australia are now severely impacted by the
'tides of history' (Pannell 2009, 31). In his seminal article on the Rainbow Serpent
tradition in Australia, the anthropologist, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1926, 24) linked the
phenomenon and distribution of the tradition to the arid nature of the continent. The
Fitzroy River provides a rare living window into the diversity of the traditions
associated with the Rainbow Serpent that are intrinsically tied to Indigenous
interpretations of the different way in which water flows, rather than to the scarcity or
absence of water, as proposed by Radcliffe-Brown (Pannell 2009). In the jila-kalpurtu
domain (wherein the term, jila, refers to permanent sub-surface water sources, and
kalpurtu are the rain-giving snakes) of the Fitzroy catchment on the northern edge of
the Great Sandy Desert, water flows are principally underground and the water snake
is said to exist in the underground structure of the channels, linking excavated
waterholes and other water sources of significance. The phenomenon of Galaroo, on
the other hand is linked to flowing surface water, in the form of major rivers, and to
long and deep permanent waterholes in broad river channels. The Rainbow Serpent of
the Wanjina-Wunggurr belief system, known as Wunggurr or Ungud, is associated
with discrete pools of water and also exhibits strong associations with the sea. The
Woonyoomboo-Yoongoorroonkoo narrative is also linked to the sea, and primarily
tells the story of the creation of the lower Fitzroy River and its floodplains.
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