Thalanyji elders are wary of their protector leaving its home in the Ashburton River should Andrew and Nicola Forrest be granted approval to build 10 weirs along the watercourse.
Thalanyji elders are wary of their protector leaving its home in the Ashburton River should Andrew and Nicola Forrest be granted approval to build 10 weirs along the Pilbara watercourse.
The Warnamankura serpent is central to a long-running dispute between the billionaire Minderoo Station owners and Buurabalayji Thalanyji Aboriginal Corporation over a proposal to build 10 weirs to rehydrate the surrounding country for a horticulture project.
In Thalanyji culture the Warnamankura created the Ashburton River and waterholes around it and still lives in the river to this day.
Giving evidence at the latest State Administrative Tribunal Hearing on Monday, Thalanyji elder Glenys Hayes said she was worried the Warnamankura may leave the Ashburton River – known as Minderoo to Thalanyji people – if it could not move freely due to the weirs.
That would leave Thalanyji people and country without its protector, Ms Hayes said.
Ms Hayes and Forrest & Forrest’s barrister Ken Pettit went back and forth for some time on Monday over the degree to which the amount of water in the river and its ability to flow through the weirs would impact the serpent’s movements.
Mr Pettit put to Ms Hayes that the Warnamankura was still in the river despite two weirs having already being built, one of which was done by Minderoo Station business entity Forrest & Forrest with traditional owner approval.
“But they are not 10 weirs,” Ms Hayes responded.
“The concern is the number of weirs in the river; the concern is whether there will be water.
“The thing is we don’t know because we have never had 10 weirs in the river.”
It was also put to Ms Hayes that Thalanyji people had ceremonies to appease the Warnamankura prior to previous works on waterways on their country taking place.
Ms Hayes said those ceremonies were to protect people, not industrial works.
“We are not happy about all the dredging, but it is going to happen,” she said of works undertaken 10 years ago to build Onslow Marine Support Base in Beadon Creek.
She said the river drying up did not necessarily mean the Warnamankura would leave.
The case is in its second week of hearings at the State Administrative Tribunal following a successful Supreme Court appeal last year by Mr Forrest over a previous SAT decision to reject the project.
Earlier in the day fellow Thalanyji elder Anne Hayes said her main concern was the environment.
“We don’t get the water like we use to, you can just about walk across the river now,” she said.
Mr Pettit posed to Anne Mr Forrest’s plan to grow native plants using water from the weirs, and the project’s potential to improve underground water sources.
Anne said those outcomes “could be a good thing”, but added uncertainty remained about the ability to grow those native plants and said she was concerned about damage to country.
The Forrests’ lawyers and business entities have argued the project’s environmental benefits previous and have in the past fortnight raised its potential industrial benefits as well.
Senior Thalanyji elder Trudy Hayes and anthropologist Edward McDonald are expected to give evidence on Tuesday.
