A rocky road to reconciliation at Dyurrite
Can cultural preservation and recreation co-exist?
Audio: NATIMUK, Victoria – My clothes are completely soaked through, and a generator is spilling out of the boot of a banged-up Subaru Outback. It's spluttering in-and-out of life and causing the microphone speaker it’s powering to cut out intermittently. Local resident, vigil organiser and apparent waterproof prophet, Jess Hopp stands precariously atop an overturned milkcrate as she delivers an impassioned speech to a ragtag crowd that’re getting increasingly soggy. Consisting of rock-climbers, farmers and local journos, even a rural firetruck has pulled up, flanking the ordeal.
The backdrop to all this, literally and figurately is Mount Arapiles, or Dyurrite as it’s known by the Indigenous Owners of the Wotjobaluk Nation. The rock looms about 140-meters out of the flat, Wimmera Plains in north-western Victoria, just a stone’s throw from the South Australian border.
Much like its peak, which is slowly being enveloped in dark fog, this sacred rock is caught up in the mother of all bureaucratic crossfires. The brightly coloured contingent of rain-jacket-clad protesters are here to mourn the fact their access to at least half of the rock-climbing routes bolted into the multi-faceted mountain may soon be out of reach. Objectively, it’s one of the best climbing spots on the continent. People have come from all over the world to scale its outcroppings. Many of whom came once and never left. Mostly residing in the neighbouring town of Natimuk, a very quaint, classically Australiana collection of weatherboard houses and a Lutheran church.
There’s a single pub, which on the day we arrived was spit-roasting an entire pig in the shed out-back, as well as general store run by a Vietnamese couple and a small climbing supplies shop. There used to be a café too but it now sits empty with a dusty ‘For Sale’ sign in the window.
The protesters, holiday-makers and residents alike now feel like this idyllic life is being taken away from them.
This stems from the release of Parks Victoria’s Draft Management Plan, which at the request of Native Title holders, The Barenji Gadijn Land Council has proposed the closure of a relatively undetermined number of routes, crags and gullies in the State Park.
The vigil starts to wrap up as the sun sets. Protesters have formed the shape of a heart, before undertaking multiple rounds of the ‘Mexican Wave’, filmed from above by a drone. I was pointed in the direction of one of the more interesting looking guests, Felix Ritson. Half bushman, half chill science student teacher, he bounded towards me barefoot in a very ‘The Man from Snowy River’ Driza-Bone jacket. Taking refuge under one of the few Red Gums around, Ritson explained why he was spending his Easter Sunday in a comprehensively soaked paddock:
I came here on a school climbing trip when I was 15 and I instantly fell in love with the place and rock climbing,” said Ritson.
Ritson, a GP who works in the region’s main town, Horsham, explained why the management plan has caused such a rift in the community, “obviously it’s a complex issue”, he said.
“One of the important parts of that I think is making sure people in government and people in the community understand the importance of this place and just how much significance it holds to thousands of people locally.”
As the wind almost knocks us over, Ritson makes clear his sympathy for Indigenous concerns, yet explains that, in his opinion, Parks Victoria did a bit of a dodgy job.
“Indigenous cultural values need to be protected. Absolutely. But I think how Parks Victoria and the government have gone about this is very poor. They didn't communicate with any of the local community and all of a sudden, they just dropped [the Management Plan] in a really devastating, impersonal and unpleasant way, it seemingly was done on a very tight budget, very quickly.”
So, as the town of Natimuk holds its breath, so do the instigators of the plan - the Barengi Gadjin Land Council. As, leaders of the heritage protection, they have become the target of racial abuse by some members of the community. This has resulted in them taking a very closed off approach in speaking to the media. Despite numerous attempts over phone and email, as well as talking with the receptionist of their Horsham office I was unable to get in contact with a representative. I don’t blame them; their silence speaks volumes.
In order to get a better understanding of what they’re trying to protect at Dyurrite, I spoke to Jordan Crook of National Parks Victoria, one of the state’s leading environmental advocacy groups.
“So, I'm not a rock climber, I'm a tree climber,” said Crook as he sat down in his office chair. Well at least I know where his allegiances lie. Armed with the sentiments expressed by the many climbers I spoke to over Easter weekend, I wanted to know what the other side of the coin had to say. “There was a balance, tried to have been found in it all. Some people say it's 50 percent. Some people say it's 65 percent that have been closed or the like,” said Crook.
“These are awesome historical archaeological sites and tell an amazing story of occupation of the Wimmera. There's an amazing story out there to be told, and it's told in the in the rock… it's in those stones. It’s in that artwork. It's really not asking for much, it's just asking for a bit of respect.”
One of the largest points of contention is the decision made by Parks Victoria and the Land Council to not release much of the evidence supporting their claims. Something that has left many people feeling like they’re being excluded from the democratic process. But Crook had a rebuttal for this too, “Traditional Owners don't want to make it public because then it leaves it open to being vandalised, which you see far too often… it's understandable why Traditional Owners don't necessarily want it all made public. It's not white fella’ business.”
I was put in contact with local climbing couple (there’s quite a few of them) Wendy and Michael Eden. Coincidentally, much like Ritson, they are also medical professionals who work in the area. But their hearts are broken for a different reason. "I've loved living out here. I've been describing Natimuk as the centre of the universe for a long time," Wendy said in their home, a few weeks after the vigil.
"It always felt like a really open-minded, left-leaning, environmentally aware, accepting community," she said. "It's been a bit of a rude shock. Everything blew up last year... it just got so much worse." Wendy, remorsefully, admits she hadn't thought about the Indigenous perspective for a lot of her 15-years of climbing, "I just came to the mountain. I wandered up to a cliff and did whatever I wanted. It didn't even occur to me that the Traditional Owners might look at this and feel hurt."
Despite her own personal remorse, she more regrets how the community has handled the situation as a whole:
“[Australia] has a long-standing movement towards recognising traditional owners, protecting cultural heritage, addressing the circumstances in which we came to actually call these public lands. And, instead of fighting it and creating this incredibly ugly situation of our culture versus their culture. We could have actually stood together with the Traditional Owners and kind of gone, ‘this is land that we all value’ and find a way forward. But it doesn't seem to be the path that people have chosen.”
The Edens told me after the interview that they had asked about 20 other locals if they would be willing to speak to me about the issue, all of which declined, stating that they didn't feel safe publicly showing their support for the plan, otherwise to be on the side of the Traditional Owners. It may seem this is just a story of a feuding country town, or the anatomization of a few conflicted hipsters. But really, it’s a tale of coexistence, of how we learn to live with history when it’s not something buried underground to be dug up by an archaeologist, or something to be read out of a textbook. This is when it’s staring right back at us, right in the rockface. About what it means to truly love a place, not just for what it gives you, but for what is asks of you.
Dyuritte, Mount Arapiles – whatever you want to call it, isn’t going anywhere. Routes may close, guidebooks made obsolete, but the stone will always be there. Unfaltering. Always watching.
It’s asking us a question, but are we ready to answer it?.