WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

Jandamarra's ability to understand and pre-empt European police strategies, including
the use of weaponry, was a fundamental element of the Bunuba resistance. He shared
his skill in using European weapons and knowledge of tactics with others. After a
fierce and long-running police campaign, resulting in Bunuba, Warrawa, Worrorra,
Nyikina, Mangala and Gooniyandi deaths, Jandamarra was killed at Tunnel Creek in
1897.
Contemporary accounts say Jandamarra's legendary status was gained from his
Jalnggangurru power, the power of his culture and knowledge. He could '[f]ly like a
bird and disappear like a ghost…he was two separate beings. His body was a physical
manifestation of a hidden spirit living secretly in a small water-soak near his Tunnel
Creek sanctuary' (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995). These references to
Jandamarra's ability to appear and disappear relate to his intimate knowledge of the
Napier Range, a rugged limestone landscape riddled with narrow passages, chimneys
and caves that allowed Jandamarra and others to avoid capture. This twisted,
convoluted terrain also prevented the police and pastoralists on horseback from
physically entering the place. The unusual nature of the landscape, coupled with the
accounts of Jandamarra's 'power' must have created a psychological barrier for the
European settlers and a sense of foreboding about what lay beyond the limestone
bastions.
Contested histories
Throughout Australia, the history of pastoralism displays some common patterns,
though the various participants have different memories and interpreations of this
history. One legacy of pastoral history is a sense of identity valued by many
Australians today. In a land where rain falls unpredictably and few rivers run, anyone
who lived or worked in the bush, particularly in those early years, developed skills to
cope with the vagaries of drought, fire and flood. Drovers and overlanders had to
survive in tough and unpredictable conditions, and they were second to none in selfsufficiency.
Drovers in particular became a symbol of adaptation to a harsh
environment, and of the adventure of the unknown in distant and isolated places. They
became the stuff of legend, reflected in Australian folklore and balladry. Ion Idriess
and Mary Durack are two writers whose work contributed a great deal to the popular
imagery of life and work in the Kimberley region. More generally, the image of the
drover is described in poems like Henry Lawson's 'The Ballad of the Drover' and
'Andy's Gone with the Cattle', and in Banjo Patterson's 'Clancy of the Overflow' and
'The Travelling Post Office'. Aspects of droving life are described in Judith Wright's
poem 'South of my Days' and in Adam Lindsay Gordon's 'The Sick Stock Rider'. In
song, the drover is celebrated in Rolf Harris' 'Tie me Kangaroo down, Sport!' and
'Diamantina Drover', the song of Hugh McDonald of the band Redgum. In film, the
image of the drover has been depicted in the 1946 historical film 'The Overlanders'
starring Chips Rafferty, and more recently Hugh Jackman portrayed the drover in Baz
Luhrmann's 2008 film 'Australia'.
Many Aboriginal people have a different view of this history. In the Kimberley, as
throughout Australia, the expansion of pastoralism was founded on the violent
dispossession of Aboriginal people from their lands. Within the Kimberley, the northwest
was in a sense the last frontier: it was extremely inaccessible, and its remoteness
and initial lack of police presence meant there were few restraints on settler's
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