"..hills near the sea high, lookd at a distance not unlike Mores or heaths in England but when you came nearer them were coverd with small trees; some few flatts and valleys lookd tolerably fertile. At noon a fire and some people were seen. After dinner came to an Anchor and went ashore. The countrey was hilly and very stony affording nothing but fresh water, at least that we found, except a few Plants that we had not before met with"
This week one resident socially descended from those forebears seen from the Endeavour noted Djillibirri (Cape Grafton) is the land base for at least 4 classic Gungganyji 'country' estates being lived upon, burned, and effectively 'farmed' when the Endeavour anchored there back in 1770, being classic family estates that have continued being lived upon, burned, and effectively farmed by those estate holders down through the centuries into the present.
Next week at least one of the Djillibirri family estate holders will be working through and reviewing the current draft Yarrabah planning scheme, and while the outcomes of this review are still unknown, there is no doubt those estateholders will be surprised:
- to find their entire estate/s are proposed to be zoned conservation rather than rural, or perhaps Aborignal estate, without their prior knowledge
- to find estates they have been burning, hunting, and farming almost forever, are about to be regulated via broad scaled remote sensing to be bushfire hazard areas which they will only be able to occupy and use under the strictest of prescribed, non-indigenous bushfire protection measures
See copy of the draft Yarrabah Shire Council's "Bushfire Hazard Overlay" mapping below, to see how much of local native title holders' estates and fire stick farming areas are proposed restricted living 'Bushfire Hazard' areas.
It is interesting to note that family estates have been burned, fire-stick farmed, and kept well since Joseph Banks on the 9 June 1770 sampled (and taxonomically labelled) the biodiversity of those estates. It is surprising planners and the State Department contracting those planners who specialize in statutory planning for Aboriginal Shires and Aboriginal lands do not seem to be able to see these areas treated and managed as rural farming estates within the Yarrabah Council's proposed first ever statutory planning scheme.
It is also interesting :
i. to compare remotely sensed bushfire hazard mapping mapping and overlays for the neighboring Cairns Region which does NOT seem to regulate vast tracts of sugarcane fields as bushfire hazards where it has not been uncommon for those estates and grass fields to be burned.
ii. to observe that many of the Yarrabah estate holders have themselves worked and assisted burn the sugarcane fields and may themselves come to wonder and speculate as to why it is family estates and 'fire-stick farming' in the Cairns regions appear to be exempted from bushfire hazard regulation, and their own much older family estates and fire-stick farming in Yarrabah Shire are not similarly able to be exempted?
Finally, it is interesting to note that the Sovereign Union website ("Asserting Australia's First Nations Sovereignty into Governance") has a specific webpage on fire-stick farming in North Queensland (possibly constituting a sovereign right) in an article entitled "Research suggests First Peoples were firestick farming in North Queensland for up to 140 000 years"