“It’s a heckuva big hole all right,” confirms Argyle Diamond Mine tour director Ted Hall, as we peer into the cavernous mile-and-a-half-long, 2,000-foot-deep AK1 open pit from an observation deck on the crater-like southern rim. “And what’s come out of it,” adds Hall, “almost 700 million carats’ worth of diamonds since 1979, makes it the world’s most productive diamond mine.”
My wife, Jan, and I are here in the remote East Kimberley region of Western Australia for the Ord Valley Muster, a gala Outback festival staged in the town of Kununurra, that ushers in the dry season each May. Our Argyle Mine tour is an optional activity on a long list of Muster events, which includes a rodeo, concerts, 4WD rally, culinary demonstrations and a host of activities for the kids.
Hall has grabbed our attention right from the start with a story worthy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not about the discovery in 1979 of the rich deposit, or “pipe,” of diamonds that led to the mine’s development.
Although they look like Tonka toys far below, gargantuan 120-ton dump trucks rumble along the benched perimeter of the pit, hauling out volcanic diamond-bearing lamproite ore to a conveyor system that transports the rock to crushers where the process of extracting gems begins.
Every year the Argyle produces almost a third of the world’s total supply of diamonds. Most are colored diamonds, including rare and highly valued pinks, as well as a range of browns — marketed under the more appealing labels of champagne and cognac. Annual production has slipped from a peak 42.8 million carats in 1994 to a current level of about 20 million carats, but an underground extension to the big pit is under construction and will begin boosting Argyle’s production when it goes on line in late 2010. The underground mine is expected to extend operations to 2018, possibly into 2020.
One senses that Ted Hall sees things much differently than we do as he scans the massive mine site, situated in a deep gap flanked by two large hills. Hall is an Aborigine and a member of the Miriuwung clan, or “mob” in the local lexicon, who are among the traditional owners/lessors of the 114-acre mine site and surrounding sub-leases — undoubtedly the richest patch of real estate in the Kimberley.
“What we indigenous folk see out there is Barramundi Gap,” says Hall. “It’s the setting for one of our mob’s most important dreaming stories and goes back to the beginning of time.”
For a society without a written language, Aboriginal dreaming stories, or dreamtime, constitute something of an oral history — a conduit of cultural mythology that describes a sacred “once upon a time” during which ancestral totemic spirit beings (usually in the form of animals, birds, fish or plants) formed the Creation.
“My great-great-grandmother told me the story when I was a young boy,” remembers Hall, “and so I’ll relate it to you briefly: Miriuwung women used to catch the barramundi fish in Smoke Creek, which ran through the gap, using nets made of spinifex grass. But one day the barra jumped over the nets and escaped through the gap — right down there where the Argyle Diamond Mine now has the open pit. As the barra jumped they shed some scales on the rocks. Those scales became the diamonds of all colors that are found here today.”
The site remains a sacred one to the Miriuwung and especially to Hall who, pointing to the hill on the eastern side of the gap, notes, “my great-great-grandmum left her handprints in a cave just up there.”
Given the Aborigines’ deep connection to their environment, we questioned how the mine could have ever been constructed on such hallowed ground.
While it’s not part of his usual mine tour narrative, Hall confides that the land-use policies of mostly white miners and developers have long been a point of contention among Aborigines, here and throughout the resource-rich western reaches of Australia.
“It took a very long time for the Aboriginal community to become well-informed enough and organized in such a way as to effectively demand better treatment and a bigger share of the pie,” says Hall. “Then things took a dramatic turn for the better in 2005.”
Hall tells us how, following three years of negotiations with traditional landowners, Argyle Diamonds Ltd. (wholly owned since 2002 by multinational mining conglomerate Rio Tinto) formally committed in June 2005 to helping improve the welfare of Aboriginal communities in the region. Fundamental to this pact was enactment of an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA).
The ILUA acknowledges that traditional owners are landlords of the mining lease area and establishes a number of mechanisms for ensuring mining operations taking place on traditional lands will provide benefits to indigenous people well beyond the life of the mine. This includes supporting community development initiatives aimed at improving social and economic prospects for Aboriginal communities, and working in partnership with indigenous people to manage the environmental and cultural impact of mining operations.
Implementation of the agreement has brought about an innovative series of cross-cultural training sessions that expose white mine employees to Aboriginal customs and culture, and vise versa. Protocols have been established to protect Aboriginal sacred sites and to better manage environmental issues, including the eventual decommissioning of the mine. Several new training and apprenticeship programs have speeded up efforts to build Argyle’s indigenous workforce. Hall says the plan is working, pointing out that the “percentage of indigenous employees has increased from single digits in 2004 to 25 percent currently, with a near-term goal of 40 percent.”
We complete our mine tour with a visit to the Argyle Diamond Gallery, a museum/showroom that displays plenty of dazzling stones (some with breathtaking price tags) and presents informative exhibits on the mining, cutting, polishing and marketing of diamonds. Notably, too, there are displays relating to the Aboriginal ethnography of the site.
Intrigued by what Hall has told us about the Argyle Agreement, we linger behind to ask more. We learn that Ted is even more involved in all of this than we realize. He’s taken advantage of Argyle’s so-called “inside-out” approach, which offers certain indigenous employees the opportunity to establish private businesses and to provide their skills or services to the mine as independent contractors. Hall now operates his mine tours on a contract basis with Argyle.
He tells us about another facet of the Argyle Agreement that provides financing for indigenous business development, especially tourism, by way of the Gelganyem Trust. Argyle makes semiannual payments to the trust to provide a capital base for community development, improved health care and education, plus small business development, which Hall sees as all-important.
“Our mob not only needs education and work experience if we ever hope to manage our own enterprises,” says Hall, who served as founding chairman of the Gelganyem Trust, “but we’ve also got to be money wise and business wise. These are things you can only develop by operating a business — and that’s why trust backing of new businesses is so vital. Even going underground, the projected mine life here is little more than 10 years. We need to be prepared with skills and businesses that can endure the mine closing.”
Noting our interest, Hall rings to see if he can arrange a lunch for us with Keren Vij, who directs Argyle’s Community Partnership Program. We’re in luck and meet Keren at Argyle’s residence village nearby, where nearly 400 workers stay during their two-week shifts. We settle in for sandwiches and fresh fruit salad at the company cafeteria, and listen as Vij tells us more about the Argyle Agreement.
Reflecting the views of many in the community, Vij sees tourism as the industry offering the most opportunity for future development. “Some headway has been made,” she says, “led by Colin and Maria Morgan, in getting an indigenous-owned tourism infrastructure up and going in the East Kimberley region.”
The Morgans operate Wundargoodie Aboriginal Safaris from a home base in Wyndham, a frontier port town on Cambridge Gulf north of Kununurra. Theirs became the first indigenous-owned tour company in the region when the couple began offering one-day tours around Wyndham in 1994. Most of their hard work and financial investment to establish Wundargoodie had come before the Gelganyem Trust was established, but the family has received trust assistance to start an ancillary shuttle service, transporting Kununurra-based workers 75 miles to and from the Argyle mine.
We want to talk with the Morgans, and since we are planning a side trip to Wyndham a couple of days hence, Vij offers to call them to set up a visit. Leaving the village complex (which features a pool, pub and gym) we encounter Patrick “Paddy” McGinty, who’s hard to miss in his regulation Argyle day-glo orange jumper. Vij introduces us, noting that McGinty is another “inside-outer,” having recently moved from the company payroll to managing his own business, handling the mine’s substantial waste management operations.
McGinty got trust backing to buy trucks and equipment for his work — which he predicts will continue during decommissioning and cleanup, well after the mine ceases production.
Back in Kununurra for more Ord Valley Muster festivities, we discover that the bustling, attractive little town of 6,000 offers plenty to interest and entertain visitors. It’s a young community, founded in 1961 in concert with the giant Ord Irrigation Scheme, which diverts water from the mighty Ord River into 40,000 acres of farmland, dedicated largely to sugar cane and fruit crops. The town is a tourist gateway to the Kimberley region’s major natural attractions, including Purnululu (Bungle Bungle) National Park, renowned for its striking sandstone domes, and the rugged Mitchell Plateau on the North Kimberley coast.
One evening we attend the annual Barramundi Concert, a dance and music extravaganza staged almost exclusively by indigenous performers. Aborigines young and old strut their stuff to the hypnotic humming of didgeridoos, a traditional wind instrument made from sections of hollowed-out tree limbs. A more contemporary performance comes from balladeer Peter Brandy, recently named Western Australia’s Indigenous Artist of the Year.
The next day Jan signs on to one of the Muster’s key cultural events, a cross-cultural roundtable, “Sharing Our Stories,” hosted by several indigenous elder-women. The local ladies offer valuable insight into lifestyles and customs vastly different from our own.
Meanwhile, I’m taking in the start of the festival’s zaniest event, the “4WD Adventure Bash,” in which several dozen costumed participants and their gaudily decorated four-wheel-drive vehicles take to the bush for some rough fun and a fair bit of prize money.
Later both of us are keen to join the Muster’s main event for foodies, a demonstration of East Kimberley cooking by Perth celebrity chef Chris Taylor.
One of Taylor’s featured dishes is barramundi, the fabled fish we’ve heard so much about but haven’t yet tasted. This member of the perch family thrives in the rivers and estuaries of northern Australia — as it does in Aboriginal dreaming — and its rich, flaky white flesh is delicious. We learn that the host restaurant has just begun testing dishes on its menu featuring barramundi farm-raised by a local Aboriginal aquaculturist Neil Yararnguli, whose business receives support from the Gelganyem Trust.
I ask Keren Vij if it’s possible to visit Yararnguli’s “farm,” and she puts me in touch with Rick Downie, a business consultant and one of the few “whitefellas” employed by Gelganyem Trust. He works with Yararnguli’s partner, Rowena, at the trust and knows the family. Downie offers to drive me to the farm the following day.
It takes only a quick tour of Yararnguli’s aquaculture operation to realize that raising fish isn’t as simple and easy as it sounds. Barramundi fingerlings must be carefully nurtured in aerated and temperature-controlled tanks and fed at precise intervals until they’re large enough to survive in outdoor ponds. Even the ponds must be aerated and water circulated to avoid imparting a muddy taste — a common fault with farm-raised fish. Hungry osprey and cormorants routinely raid the ponds.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” admits Yararnguli, “and I can’t decide whether getting it all started or keeping it going has been the most difficult.” His progress has been hampered by conflicting advice from so-called aquaculture experts and insufficient funding. He complains that trust money “has dried up.”
Downie is quick to explain that Argyle’s semiannual contributions to the Gelganyem Trust are based on the company’s financial performance over the previous six months, with payments calculated at a predetermined percentage of net earnings. Argyle’s year-to-date earnings have dropped precipitously, in step with the global economic downturn, and so have contributions to the trust.
Colin and Maria Morgan are just home from a tour and so we confirm a meeting and drive to Wyndham the next morning. We sit on the front porch of the Morgans’ comfortable home/office complex as Colin recites some of the travails of the couple’s seven-year struggle to establish Wundargoodie Aboriginal Safaris. Colin signed on as a guide for white operators for years to “learn the ropes,” while Maria worked at the tourist information center in Wyndham.
“There were many barriers to establishing a business as a ‘blackfella,'” says Colin, “but I believed if we stuck with it we’d do well because we know Aboriginal life, the customs and beliefs, in a way that no white man can or ever will. Plus, we have access to many areas where white tour operators cannot go.”
Finally in 1994 the couple began offering one-day tours into the scenic backcountry of sandstone cliffs and gorges — the land of their ancestors — around Wyndham. The business grew and soon the Morgans, with help from four of their five children, were operating multiday tours throughout the Kimberley from April through October. Notre Dame and several other American universities began contracting the Morgans to lead cultural awareness programs for students and faculty. More recently Colin was selected by movie director Baz Luhrmann to help scout shooting locations for the epic 2008 movie “Australia,” which was filmed in the region.
While the Morgans made a go of their business well before financing was forthcoming from the Argyle Agreement, they have benefited from a contract with the mine to transport employees, an enterprise handled largely by their sons.
“Even though funding has dropped off, we think the Argyle Agreement is a very good thing,” says Maria, “because it has brought the Aboriginal people of the East Kimberley together like nothing else ever has.”
During the run-up to the agreement, Argyle conducted an exhaustive series of public meetings and forums to address indigenous concerns — and the Aboriginal community responded.
“The Argyle Agreement has opened up jobs at the mine,” adds Colin, “and has given some of us a chance at our own businesses. You’ll know it when you see those blackfellas … they’re the ones with their heads held up high.”
Dave G. Houser and Jan Butchofsky-Houser are veteran travel journalists based in Nogal, N.M. (daveandjanhouser.com).)
If You Go
We rented a campervan from Kea Campers (keacampers.com) in Darwin for the 509-mile drive to Kununurra on the Stuart and Victoria Highways. While our experience with Kea was quite satisfactory, we recommend the self-drive approach ONLY to the most intrepid and experienced drivers. The highways are rough, narrow two-laners for the most part, and there are constant hazards from wildlife and road trains (massive multitrailer semis).
There are a couple of good tour options. Intrepid Travel (intrepidtravel.com) and Kimberley Wilderness Adventures (kimberleywilderness.com.au) both offer a number of small-group escorted tours to the region.
Wundargoodie Aboriginal Safaris’ website (wundargoodie.com.au) is a work in progress. If it’s not working, you can find information through indigenoustourism.australia.com.
The Ord Valley Muster in 2010 will be held May 14-20. For additional information on the Muster or the Kimberley region, contact: Tourism Western Australia (westernaustralia.com).
