A Feel-good Story?

A feel-good story to lift your sagging spirits. Reported in todays Australian As a 10-year-old station hand, George Musgrave led government men across his Cape York ancestral lands, pointing out the waterholes and good grazing spots that would serve generations of white graziers on Lakefield Station. Standing on the ravaged fringe of Saxby Lagoon — an important story place for the Kuku Thaypan people — he can only shake his head at the 73-year-old legacy of that folly. Twenty years after Lakefield Station was declared a national park, the banks of the lagoon are a deeply pockmarked quagmire from wild pigs and cattle. The ground is barren from overgrazing. The Qld Parks and Wildlife Environment Protection Agency web site claim that Lakefield’s traditional owners, the Lama Lama, Kuku Warra, Kuku Yamithi and Kuku Thaypan, are closely involved in managing the park and have been for some time. The legacy of Georges folly is not that the graziers ruined the land but that it has been ruined by inaction and poor management procedures since the land was resumed 20 years ago. The Parks and Wildlife have been managing the park with help from Kuku Thaypan and others over the last 20 years so what have they been doing? If George is trully stressed he could have done something to save his sacred land over those years but what has he done?. In a word – nothing. For those of you who don’t travel outside your southern triangle comfort zone I must point out that the feel-good reports you read in the press about national parks and indigenous input are often a long way from the truth. I went through Lakefield two years ago on the way to Cape York and for three sleeps I wondered where the park rangers were – didn’t see one. Saw a lot of signs of pigs, both bovine and city based non thinking 4 wheel drivers, lots of obnoxious weeds, a couple of crocs but very little else. Camping fees paid into a post boxes to stop tourists bothering the undermanned Ranger Station. The Parks and Wildlife people have a fairly good labour-free money collection system but you’d have to drive around a lot to find any signs of that money going back into facilities. Victor Steffenson, the architect of the traditional knowledge website, says Low Lakes is a perfect example of the synergies that exist between traditional land management and modern conservation agendas. Synergies! Give me a break. Traditional land management consisted mostly of burning. Not a bad thing in itself but meaningless by itself and the fires in the ACT, NSW and Victoria are proof that burning/backburning is not on the agenda while Greenies hold any sway in land management. When it was a grazing property the managers were obliged to keep on top of the obnxoious weeds and cull the pigs as often as they could but now the land has been reclaimed none of these land management procedures are employed. Parks and Wildlife seem more into good business practices than good land management and every state government knows that every station resumed is another Greenie vote and if you think the Kuku Thaya chaps are going to clean up the place under the leadership of George Musgrave then think again. Work isn’t in the 5 year plan. More sit-down money is.