22-05-2025
Station owner's unlocking of graveyard a step forward for Christmas Creek reconciliation
Cliffs and fertile river flat valleys mark the landscape of Christmas Creek. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
Stretching for more than a million square kilometres across Western Australia's far north, the Kimberley is a region of stories, some stretching back thousands of years.
Olive Knight among the gum trees on Christmas Creek station. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
In its centre, on a dry sandy river bed on Christmas Creek station, Olive Knight gathers eucalyptus leaves for bush medicine.
Casting a shimmering light, the branches above her sway and shift.
Olive Knight has called Christmas Creek home for decades, but it isn't her country. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
The land is always talking to you, she says.
"You have to listen, because you can hear the wind, but what is the real story?"
When Jane visits the cemetery, she feels a physical pang of sadness at its unkempt state. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
This country is burdened by some of Australia's most recent colonial history.
A history still being lived today.
This story contains images and descriptions of Aboriginal people who have died.
Flowing through its heart, the Fitzroy River, which Christmas Creek flows into, brought life and sustenance to thousands of people over the course of the region's history.
Over the past century, it has also been the lifeblood of the region's cattle industry, still one of the Kimberley's most iconic industries, but with a dark legacy.
If there's a physical embodiment of the divide between the two, it might be Christmas Creek — particularly a small plot of graves near where Olive stands.
But under the station's new owners, it's also the start of a small yet growing attempt to reconnect and reconcile the history.
The story of this country weaves through Olive's life. But this is not her land.
White settlers named this place Christmas Creek, but Aboriginal people have known it long before it became a mark on a map.
"Every part of this river has a name where people have hunted and fished and lived," Olive says.
"They survived here, on this country."
Before white man came, Gooniyandi people were the only ones to call this part of the river home.
Now, they are joined by Wangkatjungka, Walmajarri and Bunuba people too.
How and why they built a home here is a complicated story of pastoralism, colonialism and survival.
And it lies in an overgrown graveyard.
The white pastoral industry is still considered new here.
In the late 19th century, cattlemen first marched their livestock inland to settle in this valley.
"The government issued out pastoral leases to the people who settled this area, who followed along the river to come here," Olive says.
She remembers stories from her old people about these early days.
Aboriginal Australians at No. 50 Well, the Canning Stock Route, 1940. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )
Stories of unrecorded massacres in the desert, along the Canning Stock Route — the track formed to drove cattle in and out of the region.
Stories of Aboriginal people fleeing their desert home to the south of Christmas Creek, heading north to the Fitzroy Valley, where word had it you could work on a station in exchange for safety.
"People became used to the idea that if they wanted to survive, they had to migrate to these areas, even though they were going to face the consequences of the pastoralist being friendly or not friendly," Olive says.
Handout day at the store, Cherrabun Station. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )
Friendly, she explained, meant a life of servitude. Not friendly meant beatings and death.
"You were not treated human. And if you were not human, then you could just be put out of the way."
This was the life Olive was born into.
"We were slaves just working for meagre rations like flour, tea and sugar and a little bit of meat."
While she watched her father and brothers head out to build fences, break horses and muster cattle, she and the other women conducted back-breaking labour around the pastoral homestead of Christmas Creek's neighbour, Gogo Station.
At the time, up to 75 per cent of Aboriginal people's wages could be withheld by an employer under state policies that were not overturned until 1972.
"We were either seen as assets, or something else," Olive says.
"If you did the wrong thing, you could just be put out of the way."
Cattle at Billiluna Pool, circa 1940. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )
Aboriginal stockmen working with horses, Gogo Station, circa 1957-58. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )
Horses being broken in at Gogo Station circa 1957-58. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )
After wage reform was made in Western Australia in the 1970s, station owners stopped using Aboriginal labour, saying they couldn't afford to pay the Indigenous workforce.
But the communities of displaced Aboriginal families stayed, living in small settlements on the stations, like Wangkatjungka.
They remained, and so too did the historic tensions.
Modern-day Wangkatjungka. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
In 1993, the ABC's 7.30 program travelled to Wangkatjungka to cover the disagreements between the then-owner of Christmas Creek and the Aboriginal community.
The community told 7.30 they were locked out of their graveyard and denied access to hunting grounds and sacred places by the station.
They alleged it was a clear breach of the international covenant on human rights.
Land laws in WA stated Indigenous people had the right to hunt and forage for their native food on all unclosed portions of pastoral leases — the people of Wangkatjungka were surrounded by fenced lands, meaning access was at the lease owner's discretion.
"It's not restricted to Christmas Creek, this access problem is widespread across the Kimberley," Professor Peter Yu said at the time.
"But certainly in terms of the magnitude of the problem and the seriousness of it, I think Christmas Creek would have to be one of the worst."
More than three decades on, the Wangkatjungka cemetery still stands.
But you would be forgiven for not knowing it was there.
It is overgrown and in a state of disrepair.
When Jane visits the cemetery, she feels a physical pang of sadness at its unkempt state. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
For decades, the families of those buried were refused access to maintain the graves. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
Graves of Bunuba, Walmajarri and Gooniyandi people were behind a locked gate. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
It's a sight lamented by Olive's daughter, Jane Bieundurry, as she sits in front of her son's grave.
He died almost seven years ago.
"My son passed away from suicide. Suicide is a hard thing to get over. I still grieve. I still ask these questions of why," Jane says.
"As a mother you can't get over it because of your jinjil."
Jane has only been able to see her son's grave when the station owners unlock the gate for her. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
She touches her abdomen and translates jinjil to mean the physical connection a mother has to her child through the umbilical cord.
"Your jinjil is still connected to your child no matter what, you'll still have that feeling even when you've lost your child."
When she buried her son, Jane had to go to the then-station owner to ask for permission to enter the cemetery.
She and other members of the Wangkatjungka community said for decades that funerals were their only opportunity to tend to the graves of their loved ones.
In the meantime, they were locked out.
Jane Bieundurry lived in Wangkatjungka for decades before tensions and sadness drove her away. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
The graves became overgrown, hidden by the surrounding bushland.
"Grass growing all over them make me no good," Jane says.
"Just like they're singing out for help.
"I can feel it now, they're calling out, 'Do something about this place.'"
But things are changing at Christmas Creek.
And that change has come in an unlikely form — a cattleman, at home among the fertile river flats of north-west New South Wales.
The Kaputar Valley is a region also defined by the river that runs through it.
John Manchee looks out onto the Namoi River which runs through his home property in NSW. ( ABC: Cam Lang )
John Manchee has always found himself heading to its rocky banks to mull things over.
"This is where I would come to play as a child," he says.
"We've been here for 101 years on this property; my grandfather and my father are both buried here.
"It's a very significant place for us."
With a mountain range on one side and a river on the other, this valley has been home to the Manchee family — and their stud cattle — for generations.
"It's a place that has treated us very well."
The Namoi River flows through the Manchee property in NSW. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
Sorghum is among the crops grown in the Kaputar Valley. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
The Kaputar Valley in north-west NSW. ( ABC Landline: Cam Lang )
But part of John has always been drawn northwards, to shift his cattle genetics to the allure of wide, open plains.
A stint in the red centre on stations around Alice Springs as a young man did not scratch the itch.
And then, decades later, he saw Christmas Creek up for sale.
"The history of Christmas Creek is everywhere. Everyone's got a Christmas Creek story and I'd always heard of Christmas Creek being the sweet country.
"I fell in love with it instantly, and I can just see agriculture being such a dynamic resource for the Kimberley into the future."
John Manchee purchased Christmas Creek station in 2023. ( ABC: Cam Lang )
In 2023, he bought the station lease.
"I'm a big believer of things happening for a reason … and it was one of those things that came along.
"You know, once it happens and then you go, 'Right, this is what I want to do.'"
When John took over Christmas Creek, tensions between the community and the pastoral station had been running hot for decades.
But a simple gesture changed the mood in a heartbeat.
"I just said open up the gate to the graveyard — it's their graveyard," he says.
"It was a no-brainer. If that is their heritage, then they're entitled to that for sure and certain."
The cemetery is now open for the community to visit whenever they want. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
John wants this mending relationship to continue across the station home they share.
"It's a matter of getting on with your neighbours," he says.
"We've got to have respect on both sides so we can work together."
Now, Jane Bieundurry brings her grandsons to visit their father's grave without needing permission.
"My grandsons were small when my son died," she said.
"With the previous owners, we couldn't even come out here."
Even with the gate now unlocked, it still isn't easy.
"As they grow older they're asking questions like: 'Why did he do that?'
"Or they'll look up in the sky and say, 'He's up there, he's watching us.'"
John Manchee has unlocked the gate to the Wangkatjungka cemetery. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
Jane's grandson visits his father's grave. ( ABC News: Alys Marshall )
But for residents of Wangkatjungka who have been fighting for this for decades, it's been worth it.
"There is a very strong mutual understanding of each other," Jane says.
"It may have taken a long while to get here, but it's here now.
"And I'm just happy the younger generations can enjoy the benefits of what's been fought for in the past."
The family of the previous owner of Christmas Creek station were contacted for comment. They declined to be interviewed.
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