Starcke: 'Historic alliance'
By Nick Everett
BRISBANE — One hundred and twenty people attended a March 21 meeting here organised by the Wilderness Society to protest against the proposal by the Goss government to establish a 10,000 hectare mining reserve in the southern part of the Starcke wilderness.
The proposed mining reserve is sandwiched between the rugged Starcke National Park and one of the most environmentally significant mangrove wetlands in north Queensland.
Last year a campaign was organised to prevent George Quaid Holdings from selling Cape York's Starcke wilderness to an overseas investor and to return it to the traditional owners.
Speaking at the meeting, Wilderness Society director Karenne Jurd said the campaign to return Starcke has brought about "an historic black-green alliance that is going to have the impact on environmental politics in the '90s that the Franklin dam High Court decision had in the '80s".
While the state government was prepared to obtain the land from George Quaid, Premier Goss has broken his promise to "ensure that this important piece of coastal land will be protected from both overseas sale and inappropriate development", said Jurd.
Speakers also included university lecturer Ross Fitzgerald, Noel Pearson from the Cape York Land Council, Aboriginal elders from Starcke and Cape Melville and Senators John Woodley and Margaret Reynolds.
Fitzgerald talked of the "joint movement between Aboriginal people and conservationists" during the campaign.
Pearson, who acted as an Aboriginal representative during the Mabo bill negotiations last year, emphasised the importance of "long-held conservation skills that we are trying to revive".
Pearson argued that these connections and efforts to revive traditional land use made Aboriginal people the most able land managers of the Starcke wilderness. "Aboriginal land ownership is an investment for the ecological sustainability of this country in the future", he said.