flying boats and whatnot

We took a walk out on the mudflats to some wrecks today, and it got me reflecting on how we remember our story, how we package it up in our guidebooks.

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We have some relics of war around here.  The most famous I guess would be the flying boat wrecks in Roebuck Bay, sunk by Japanese fighter planes in World War II.  The fifteen flying boats were carrying Dutch refugees from Indonesia and had stopped at Broome to refuel.  All sank, with an unkown number of refugees, maybe eighty or a hundred, dying.

At very low tides you can walk out to the wrecks of the flying boats, about a kilometre offshore across the mudflats.  They feature in guidebooks as one of the "things to do" in Broome, usually with some instructions as to how to find them alongside a brief description of their sinking, focused on the tragedy of deaths of so many women and children as they fled an invasion.

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Another relic, from a different kind of war, is Lillimooloora Homestead.  As European settlers pushed deeper into the Kimberley in the late 1800s, many local Aboriginal people resisted the incursion.  The Bunuba people of the Fitzroy Valley had more success than many, thanks to a combination the cunning and skill of their leaders - particularly Jandamarra - and the land itself.  A high limestone wall, filled with secret caves and canyons, cuts across their land and made a perfect defense and refuge for those who knew it well. 

Jandamarra and the Bunuba held back the tide of colonisation for years with tricks and taunts and occasional violence.  They were feared across the breadth of the Kimberley.  The payback was brutal - massacres up and down the Fitzroy River, an unknown number dying.  Men, women, children.  Lillimooloora Homestead was made into a police station - the headquarters for attacks against the Bunuba.  We stopped there last year, wandered among the ruins and gazed up at the limestone cliffs beyond.  Tried to understand the significance of the place and its history.

Jandamarra and the Bunuba who fought with him and supported him could be remembered like Sitting Bull or the 300 Spartans.  A small band who stood against an overwhelming force, defending not just family and home but defending a civilisation, and who achieved more and held out longer than any would have imagined possible.

And here's how one typical guidebook sums up the significance of Lillimooloora and the whole Bunuba resistance: "Originally a pastoral homestead, the station was taken over by the police in 1893.  Jandamarra, 'Pigeon', an Aboriginal outlaw in the 1890s shot a police constable there in 1894."

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Lest we forget.