The Tasmanian Government has rejected calls from Aboriginal leaders to purchase the historic Woolnorth property in the state’s far north-west.
The once-vast 143,500-hectare property was this week put on the market by its Chinese owner and Van Dairy boss, Xianfeng Lu.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council (TALC), along with some Green and Independent politicians, say the land must be now returned to its traditional custodians, the palawa people.
“The Woolnorth farm exists as it does today because there was a violent and bloody dispossession of Tasmanian Aboriginal people at the prerogative of the Crown,” TALC Chair Colin Hughes said.
“Our people have suffered extreme hardships for the last 220 years as the result of losing our land, we fare far worse in every single social and economic indicator than any other group in Tasmanian society.”
He said the site has significance to the state’s indigenous community and a strong connection to the 1820s Cape Grim Massacre, where thirty Aboriginal people were killed.
He believes the farm should be ‘rightfully gifted’ to the palawa people for truth-telling and reconciliation purposes.
One of Tasmania’s newest MPs Craig Garland supports Hughes’s views, saying Woolnorth is a crucial opportunity for collaboration between all levels of government.
“The community must see some control and have some agency in the future maintenance and preservation of these historic sites with many Aboriginal cultural values, unique wildlife and habitat,” he said.
“It must be a priority for the state government to work with key organisations to increase community awareness of the significance of the sites and records that inform the origins of our present-day community.”
“Instead of … committing to spending hundreds of millions on a new AFL football stadium … they should spend a portion of that on preserving historic locations at Woolnorth while protecting that unique environment, the creatures and the actual Tasmanian devils.”
