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 ...