Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows scenery and wildlife at and around Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Local Aboriginal employment officer Willigan discusses the challenge of balancing tourism and culture. Another local, Kevin Oscar, talks about the seasonal arrival of thousands of tourists. Bruce Williams, on a canyon boat trip and later on an escarpment, talks about the benefits of cultural tourism as a way of maintaining culture and providing for the future.

Educational value points

• In 1990 ecotourism and cultural tourism were relatively new and in the clip Willigan draws attention to the debate in Fitzroy Crossing communities between those who believed that cultural tourism could bring jobs and income and those who believed that the price of cultural tourism would be the commodification of their culture. Views about ecotourism at the time were less polarised and focused on how tourists’ impact on country could be sustainably managed.

• While Willigan discusses the challenges presented by tourism in remote communities, tour guide Bruce Williams talks about its positive side. He describes both the personal and wider cultural benefits that his work brings and explains how he was initially reticent in his role as a tour guide, but is now very confident. He also talks about his belief that showcasing his culture through tourism preserves traditions and encourages young people to connect with the land.

• In the clip Kevin Oscar expresses reservations about the numbers of tourists visiting the area and in the years that followed those numbers continued to grow as tourists increasingly sought 'authentic’ cultural experiences. In 2002–03 hundreds of thousands of tourists to the Kimberley region spent about $268.3 million on artworks, artefacts, tours of scenic sites and attending performances of traditional dances.

• The Kimberley region, comprising 360,000 square km in far north WA, is one of the world’s last great wilderness areas, its complex landscape characterised by spectacular gorges such as Windjana, waterfalls and WA’s oldest cave systems at Tunnel Creek. Williams explains that during the Devonian Period (375–350 million years ago) the area was covered by a shallow sea and coral reefs. Geological movement, erosion and varying sea levels have led to its present state.

• Willigan’s Fitzroy (2000) was produced by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), which was established in 1980 to promote Indigenous culture, language, dance and music and to provide training and employment opportunities for Indigenous people. CAAMA includes a film and television production company, radio network, recording studios and a record label, and is a major shareholder in the Alice Springs-based Imparja Television.

Scenes of landscape and wildlife at and around Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Local Aboriginal employment officer Willigan is interviewed, sitting by a river.
Willigan And nowadays, with ecotourism, people are starting to realise the beauty of our country and it’s putting pressure back on us to be part of the tourism industry. So a lot of people are saying they want to find out about Aboriginal culture. They want to talk to old people, young people. They want to talk to men and women, and they are sort of putting pressure on our community that we sort of have a responsibility. Whether we should or not is what people are going through, you know, a bit of a dilemma, whether they should showcase their culture and make money out of it, or whether they should maintain the integrity of their culture. It’s what the balance is. It’s what a lot of people are sort of battling with.

Kevin Oscar is interviewed standing outside a property.
Kevin Oscar Oh, we get thousands of tourists through here. Thousands of the bastards! As soon as the bloody season’s over, the wet season’s over, they in numbers. Hundreds of them. They come in by bus, cars, bike, pushbike. Aeroplane. Helicopters. Even walking. Fair dinkum.
Interviewer How come?
Oscar Well, they love this country. You see beautiful scenery around here, Tunnel Creek, Windjana Gorge. They’re all in love with bio trees, black rocks. You know, just the scenery.

Shots of the gorge. Bruce Williams is on a canyon boat trip. He is interviewed on an escarpment.
Bruce Williams What I do for a living is I work in the tourism here, doing a tour. It’s an Aboriginal historical one that we started. It’s called (inaudible) Cruise. When I first started, they couldn’t get A or B out of me. Two or three years, like, confidence builds up, and for the last seven, eight years that I’ve been doing the tour, a lot of people say ‘Gee, you’re like a motor that you can start and you cannot stop.’ The only way you can stop is my voice runs out. When I normally get up here, what I normally say to my paying passengers, ‘What you’re looking at here is – I call it the mini Bungle Bungle. 350 million years ago, the sea were here. What you’re looking at is a continental shelf.’ This here was built by (inaudible) lytes, more or less. It’s the same age as (inaudible), but they’ve got the old sediment. That’s about 690 million years old. That’s in the pre-Cambrian age. This here is in the Devonian period. The reason why we started this is we’re looking back into our near future, like the up and coming ones – if you don’t start this, like elsewhere, some of the culture has been lost, and by us doing this, it encourages more kids and also, for my little family itself.