Coronation Hill is located in the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory. It lies in the upper South Alligator River valley in the northwestern sector of the former Gimbat pastoral lease (see Figure 12-1). In the early 1980s, this area was an object of increasing interest from several quarters, one of which was the mining industry. A previous generation of small-scale uranium mining at many locations along the valley in the 1950s and 1960s had also produced evidence of gold deposits. In the early 1980s the international price for gold rose. Broken Hill Pty Ltd (BHP), the on-site operations company for the Coronation Hill Joint Venture, began drilling at the old open-cut mine on Coronation Hill in 1984, and soon obtained very promising results.^[2]

At the same time, the NLC and the environmental movement anticipated that Gimbat would soon become available both for land claim and for declaration as a National Park. In the mid-1970s, the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry (CoA 1977) had put forward a land use framework for the entire Alligator Rivers region. Central to the management regimes it proposed was the establishment of a major National Park to encompass at least one important river catchment. The river selected for protection was the South Alligator (ibid: 288–9), and the National Park was named Kakadu. Declaration of the Park proceeded in stages. Stage I was declared in 1979 and Stage II in 1984, both to the north of Gimbat (see Figures 12-1 and 12–2). By the mid-1980s, declaration of Stage III of the Park was on the Federal Government’s agenda, and this was expected to extend Kakadu south into Gimbat and Goodparla stations to protect most of the remaining South Alligator catchment. Prior to the declarations of Stages I and II, opportunities were allowed for Aboriginal land claims to be heard over those areas, after which the successfully claimed lands were leased back by the Aboriginal owners to the Parks Service. The NLC therefore anticipated that, in the time between the stations becoming unalienated Crown land and their declaration as parts of the National Park, there would be an opportunity to claim Gimbat and Goodparla stations on behalf of the traditional owners. Supporters of that scenario were worried that the Coronation Hill development might allow a mining interest to be established before the land could be placed under a new regime that protected its Aboriginal and environmental values.

Gimbat lay within the northerly reaches of the territory of the Jawoyn language group. By the early 1980s there were no Jawoyn resident there, though small numbers had worked and lived there under previous lessees. Now they resided in many directions, but predominantly in a large arc from Pine Creek to the east, in and around the town of Katherine, to Eva Valley Station and Barunga Settlement to the south. The particular significance that Gimbat and its immediate environs retained for a number of knowledgeable senior Aborigines, however, arose from the occurrence there of a number of sites of extreme power and danger associated with the creator figure Bula, not all of which were mapped. While Aboriginal interests could not at that time be asserted through a land claim, research conducted for the ASSPA had led to the registration in 1980 of two Bula sites in Gimbat. Over the next few years, the NLC’s research in adjoining or overlapping areas for the Jawoyn (Katherine Area) Land Claim (Merlan and Rumsey 1982) recorded a complex of such sites across Gimbat and into neighbouring areas, and documented the mythology of Bula as the most powerful and dangerous dreaming known to the Jawoyn. The NLC relied on this information in representations to the Federal Government made in the early 1980s, urging the priority of sacred site protection in future land use regimes for the area.

Source: SSCERA 1988: 2.

During this period the Jawoyn themselves were entering a new phase of political engagement and heightened self-consciousness. A decade after introduction of the new Federal policy of indigenous self-determination, a range of community issues bearing upon some part or other of Jawoyn country demanded the constant attention of senior Jawoyn (Merlan 1998: 89). Among these matters was the preparation and presentation of the Jawoyn (Katherine Area) Land Claim over five parcels of land, the largest and most important being Katherine Gorge National Park, lying between Katherine town and Gimbat Station. The NLC presented this claim in a manner that had a particular bearing upon Jawoyn self-awareness. It argued that the claimants made up a unitary and undifferentiated group of traditional owners, the Jawoyn language group, for all of Jawoyn country (Merlan and Rumsey 1982: 40, 55–6).^[3]

That model of traditional ownership also carried implications for the way in which the NLC could approach the policy issues emerging over Gimbat. Though evidence in the Katherine Area claim concluded in 1984, the Land Commissioner’s judgment was not received by the NLC until October 1987. Two small parcels of land in northern Gimbat were included in the claim, and the NLC expected the opportunity to lodge a further land claim over Gimbat as a whole on behalf of the Jawoyn. The NLC consequently approached the representation of Jawoyn interests in Gimbat in the mid-1980s under the constraint of that model of landownership already argued before the Land Commissioner. In early 1986, shortly after development works at Coronation Hill had become a public administration issue, the NLC made clear its view of where sovereignty in the matter properly lay. It told a Senate Inquiry that mining development there was a matter for the Jawoyn people as a whole to decide, and that any statement by a site custodian that denied the sacredness of the place should be put before a full Jawoyn meeting for verification (SSCNR 1986: 2331–2).

The ASSPA, by contrast, needed to ensure that it was acting consistently with the wishes of the senior custodians. This group consisted centrally of three old men whose primary traditional attachments lay within Gimbat, though respect was also accorded to the knowledge of a small number of other senior men from other areas. While the ASSPA could accept decisions made at meetings of larger groups, it attempted to verify that the custodians in attendance were in accord with such decisions. Often that would be apparent from the role they played in discussions. The NLC and the ASSPA thus came to the Coronation Hill issue with markedly different conceptions of the locus of Aboriginal authority that should govern its management.

This was of further significance in view of continuing organisational immaturity among the Jawoyn themselves. The Jawoyn Association was incorporated in 1985 to manage royalty and business income from properties in the region. It remained poorly organised and staffed for some years, acting mainly as a public political front during the latter half of the Coronation Hill dispute. In the absence of independent institutional resources, Jawoyn views on Gimbat and Coronation Hill were thus articulated through the channels offered by a continuing and at times intense engagement with external agencies, especially the NLC, the ASSPA, and the BHP project team.