Lyluequonny - My island home
According to Annette Sculthorpe, one of many Indigenous caretakers of the Lyluequonny people of Tasmania's South East Nation, we don't own the land, the land owns us and we are the custodians.
Working with the South East Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation (SETAC), Annette helps conserve a region that extends from Kingston to Cockle Creek. This includes Bruny Island with a land mass of 215,000 hectares of land and 662 kilometres of coastline.
SETAC has planted more than 15,000 trees, plants, shrubs and ground covers in this area thanks to successive grants from the Australian Government Envirofund, totalling more than $85,000.
At Great Bay on Bruny Island, more than 900 trees have been planted and fencing has been built to protect an Aboriginal quarry and artefact site of stone tools made by the traditional Nuenone people.
"This is a fragile coastal zone with a great deal of erosion caused by four-wheel drives and human access to the beach," Annette says.
"The area has been extremely damaged and you end up with a road where there was none. Tourists camp on the foreshore and take their cars on the beach where we have stone artefacts, which are being crushed."
With only one ranger and little infrastructure on the island, the conservation work of the Indigenous people is vital to the island's future.
"In Great Bay we have protected a seven-kilometre area," Annette explains. "We've revegetated the land with native endemic plants such as reeds, pigface, rushes, edible coastal currents and coastal wattles, using seeds collected from the area."
Monitoring and maintenance is conducted up to six years from completion - but the work doesn't end there. Revegetation is followed by the installation of interpretation signs, formal access to the beach, and steps. "We have seen the land animals and sea birds come back, which we never used to see because it was so barren," Annette says. "Now, if you go into areas where it's quiet and native plants are growing, you can see the bandicoots and birds returning. It's really pleasant to think you've done something to help the environment."
Annette knows the coastal region well because she belongs to the Lyluequonny band.
The South East Nation has four bands; Mouheneene (Hobart), Melukerdee (Huon River), Lyluequonny (Recherche Bay), and Nuenone (Bruny Island that the Nuenone people called Lunnawanna-alonnah).
"Traditional Aboriginal Tasmanians were nomadic people," Annette explains. "They followed the food chain from their homelands to change their diet from seafood, to muttonbird, seal, swan eggs, bush foods and land animals, never returning to the exact same area within their homelands to enable the replenishment of the foods eaten in the last season.
"Aboriginal people survived solely on the environment. The land, the seas, that was all they had. This is why we protect and preserve." Great Bay isn't the only place to benefit, with SETAC working on cultural sites at Cola point and Cloudy Bay on Bruny Island, Partridge Island, midden sites at Cato's bay near Cygnet, and Hawker's Green on Esperence River, Dover.
"We have excellent reputation as far as land managers are concerned," Annette says. "We're state-known, winning the Landcare Indigenous award in 2003 and then being represented in the national awards."
More information
South East Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation: (03) 6295 0004 or setac@trmp.net.au
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