BLOW HOLE SHACKS - BURIAL CONCERN

Sunset in Blowholes, Quobba Point, Western Australia.

A Traditional Owner for the Quobba Station coastline north of Carnarvon says redeveloping the Blow Holes recreational shacks will disturb his ancestors’ remains.

For many years Bayangu and Yinigarrara man Ben Roberts has performed the duty of reburying skeletons exposed by erosion in the coastal sand dunes.

“I think people like the Shire and anyone else that’s wanting to do development up and down the coastline, thats for anywhere were Aboriginal people have been before their time and mine, they just need to show a little bit more respect for those people who are buried in that Ngurra, in that ground,” he said. “We have got other sites that’s attached to those people, that’s why they went there. Like waterholes and sacred sites, song and dance lines, it’s just that we never ever have been consulted.”

The Shire of Carnarvon is carrying out plans to demolish the existing shacks and to construct a caravan park with chalets.

However Mr Roberts said no geophysical survey of the area had ever been done to locate the burial sites.

“I’d like something to be done about it but in a form where everybody works together on where they can go and where they can’t go and if we have to fence the sandhills off then so be it.”