House debates

Thursday, 23 October 2014

Adjournment

Woorabinda Aboriginal Community

Photo of Ken O'DowdKen O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Last week, on 15 and 16 October, I hosted a visit to my electorate by the Minister for Indigenous affairs Senator Scullion. We visited other locations in my area, but I want to talk about the visit we had to Woorabinda. Woorabinda is an Aboriginal community located on Mimosa Creek. It is a self-governing Aboriginal community with a Deed of Grant in Trust and has a population of around 1,000 people. It is 170 kilometres south-west of Rockhampton and covers an area of 392 square kilometres. Woorabinda means 'kangaroo sit down' in the Aboriginal language. Woorabinda was established in 1927 and the community was practically maintained and sustained through stock work on cattle stations which led to the formation of the Woorabinda Pastoral Company run by the council with a board of directors.

The Woorabinda Local Government Shire consists of five parcels of land with a total area of approximately 39,000 hectares, which are held by the council under a Deed of Grant in Trust, DOGIT. These properties are known as: Woorabinda of 21,900 hectares; Foleyvale of 10,700 hectares; Sorrell Hills of 1,245 hectares; Zamia Creek of 2,822 hectares; and Duaringa Block of 2,173 hectares, which total to up around 39,000 hectares of land, which is quite considerable. Workers accommodation on these properties is virtually non-existent or very limited, which is an issue which the mayor and his deputy mayor raised with us on our visit. The council owns a freehold block at Stoney Creek, near Foleyvale, and the area of that is 4,800 hectares. It also has a small acreage in the township of Duaringa of about one acre.

In 1927 the camp in Taroom was near the site of the Nathan Dam project—Nathan Dam was talked about even back in those days, in 1927. The Aboriginals were forcibly removed from Taroom and sent to Woorabinda, and that was the start of the Woorabinda township. In 1942, some people came from Cape Bedford in Far North Queensland and some of those people did return to their homeland in 1949, and it was then named Hopevale.

Woorabinda is a stand-alone, self-governing community. There are approximately 52 clans represented in Woorabinda, with a vast number of language groups throughout Queensland. We accompanied the Indigenous education staff on an attendance walk as part of the remote school attendance strategy. This scheme is working very well in Woorabinda. It means that some kind-hearted ladies of Aboriginal descent in Woorabinda walked from house to house to make sure that the kids were out of bed and on their way to school. We walked with them for a few kilometres. The system does work very well and the attendance is over 85 per cent, which is a big improvement on what it was before we started the scheme. The school motto is 'proud and deadly', and you have to love it. There are six classes, from prep to grade 7. Of course, grade 7 finishes in Queensland this year and then it moves to high school from here on in.

Wadja Wadja is an independent, non-denominational community private high school and it runs in conjunction with the other primary school. The school has developed a number of partnerships with organisations such as Griffith University, Central Queensland Indigenous Development and the Australian Red Cross. Each morning the Department of Communities run a nutrition program which provides students with breakfast, morning tea and lunch. They have a great outdoors program and everything seems to be functioning pretty well.

There is a problem in that it is a non-alcoholic township but, of course, somehow or other drugs and alcohol still seem to get into that community, which is a concern for Terry Munns, the mayor, and his deputy, William Gulf. They are more concerned about the drugs and the gambling that goes on unsolicited in the town. One lady on the council was quite emotional about the effects and asked us if we could please try and help them do something about this issue. I could go on with a lot more. (Time expired)