Uncle Robbie Thorpe talks with Wangan and Jagalingou man, Gurridyula Gaba Wunggu, who has been one of the main players in the resistance to the Adani Carmichael coalmine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, as its being constructed on his people’s homeland.

Gurridyula, or Coedie McAvoy, has been staging a protest action opposite the entry to the Adani mine site. A six hour drive inland from the coast of central queensland they have established a camp opposite the mine - Waddanangu ‘The Talking’, where they have sat within a ceremonial “bora” circle, and kept the fire burning for more than 994 days.

The Queensland Government extinguished the Wangan and Jagalingou’s Native Title in 2019, giving Adani freehold title to the land.

Section 28 of Queensland’s Human Rights Act (2019) states that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold distinctive cultural rights.

This includes the right to “conserve and protect the environment and productive capacity of their land” and the right to “maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual, material and economic relationship with the land, territories, waters, coastal seas and other resources with which they have a connection under Aboriginal tradition or Island custom”.

Since 26 August 2021, they’ve maintained a fire inside of the stone circle up on top of the hill, opposite the pit and maintained one Wangan and Jagalingou person inside the circle 24 hours a day.

No foreign objects are allowed inside the circle. You can’t wear shoes, can’t have watches and can’t have phones inside the circle. There is no roof on it. There is only bark and leaves. Because you can’t have anything foreign inside the circle, on the ground or above it.

These three rules – having the fire going, one Wangan and Jagalingou person inside at all times and no foreign objects – were to bait the police in.

And because we created these three rules and had stuck to them for so long, the police didn’t want to intervene, because who are they to break a tradition. It is a ceremony.