Her Tribe Has Vanished - Malngin Aboriginal People: Ord River Dam / Lake Argyle

In 2005, Marjie and I visited Lake Argyle near Kununurra in north west Australia.

The earth-filled Ord River Dam, completed in 1971, is 335 metres long and 98 metres high. In 1996, the spillway was raised by 5 metres to double the dam’s capacity to 10,763 gigalitres, or 21½ times the volume of Sydney Harbour.

With a surface area of about 1000 square kilometres, it is the largest reservoir in Australia. Originally built to irrigate rice crops for export to China, the plan was scuttled: magpie geese ate the rice shoots quicker than they could be planted!

The waters of the dam flooded parts of a number of pastoral properties owned by the Durack family.

Durack Homestead on “Argyle Downs” was the centre of a vibrant social life in the surrounding area.

Given that the homestead would be flooded, the main building was dismantled, and later rebuilt above the waterline as a museum.

These words were penned by a woman of the Malngin people, displaced by the flooding of her country and sacred places.

Her Tribe Has Vanished

Her tribe has vanished

With daughters and sons.

All her people

Lie under the sand:

Nothing to prove

That she’d ever lived,

But the faint outline

Of a stencilled hand.

In earth-red ochre

Or charcoal line:

- so many caves

With the same written sign.

I trace the shape

With a pensive finger

… why do I linger?

An ancient sadness

Chills this place.

That’s why I stop

And pause.

Dark sister, without name

Or face,

I place

My hand on yours.

The long unmeasured years

Divide us.

Too late. Too late

For meeting.

But in this quiet

Forsaken cave

Hands touch

... in greeting.