Bones hang along the fence at the entrance to a property in the bush on the southern outskirts of Ipswich, west of Brisbane.
Made from papier-mache, the bones represent atrocities the site’s occupants believe were inflicted upon their Indigenous ancestors when it was part of the lands of the Deebing Creek Mission.
Yet what lies inside the gate is a scene far from macabre.
The first sight that greets visitors to 144 Grampian Drive is a grove of bananas, cassavas and rosellas, heavy with fruit and growing amid a tangle of sweet potatoes, pumpkins, leafy greens and herbs. The word “sovereignty” is emblazoned in large white letters upon an orange mesh fence which protects the plants from the chickens, turkeys and guinea fowl that roam between homes made of pallets, recycled timber and tarpaulins.
If not the cluck of a chook, the first sound a visitor might hear is the laughter of children at play.
Gamilaraay man Deekay says it is a sound that has “broken through the seriousness” that prevails at the camp he and his son, Thulu-Wii, have been occupying alongside other protesters since early 2019.
“Laughter and joy is a big part of healing this place,” he says.
Deekay and the others who occupy the site are fighting developer plans to turn this 30 hectare parcel of land into hundreds of new homes.
On Thursday, the group were issued an ultimatum by developer AV Jennings.
“Please remove yourself and your associates, the camp and possessions,” the letter read.
Failure to do so would see AV Jennings charge Deekay and his companions with trespass, the letter warned.
A contested history
The developer has no plans to build upon the former mission itself, which was heritage-listed in recognition of the “great significance” it holds for the descendants of Aboriginal people brought here from as far afield as north Queensland and west as far as Charleville.
Nor upon an Aboriginal cemetery, recognised only thanks to the campaigns of Indigenous people of the 1970s, led by Uncle Les Davidson.
It is the surrounding culturally sensitive bushland that the occupants of the Deebing Creek camp are fighting to protect, as they believe it harbours the unmarked remains of ancestors.
Frasers Property acquired more than 110 hectares of the former Aboriginal reserve in 2015 and four years later AV Jennings signed a cultural heritage management plan to develop an adjoining lot with Aboriginal corporation the Yuggera Ugarapul People, who were contacted for comment for this article.
It is not a document recognised by the occupants of the Deebing Creek camp.
Yuggera man Daniel Thompson says Native Title and Indigenous land use agreements have had a poisonous effect on First Nations communities.
“They have turned us on each other,” Thompson says.
The struggle at Deebing Creek is not only over land, but facts.
Carla Davidson-Fewquandie, a Yuggera and Kullili traditional owner of Deebing Creek, says people raised by those who lived at the mission passed on the story of Julia Ford, a teacher who tried to defend a group of more than 50 children from the rifle. The teacher and children were massacred, the oral history goes, their bodies dumped in a pit. This horrific account is not acknowledged in Deebing Creek’s officially recognised history.
“We just want to conserve this site and make sure that the right thing is done and the history is being told,” Davidson-Fewquandie says. “The right history.”
Ford’s headstone has been found and forms part of the Aboriginal cemetery, her death recorded as 1896.
But those occupying the Deebing Creek camp do not believe the headstone marks the teacher’s real grave. Instead, they believe her remains lie in a long rectangular depression beside it, alongside those of the children she tried to save.
So, over recent years, Yuggera Ugarapul traditional owners commissioned archaeologist Wayne Brennan to conduct ground-penetrating radar analysis in search of unmarked graves.
Brennan’s report found underground “anomalies” on the site at which Ford and the children are said to be buried, determining these “could be due to an excavation taking place and then subsequently refilled”.
At the same time, Prof David Lambert from Griffith University’s ancient DNA laboratory has been studying human remains found on the former mission.
“Oral history always said there was a pit and there was a massacre,” Thompson says.
“Well this shows there was a pit and there was bones.”
AV Jennings has previously said it was “deeply disappointed to be accused of being disrespectful” to traditional owners, “particularly when it is based on erroneous information”.
“It is a matter of fact that our Deebing Heights site does not include any part of the former Mission cemetery,” a 2019 statement quoting its national development manager, Angus Johnson, read.
The developer says its archaeologists have held extensive discussions with traditional owners and “there are no records or historical reports of a massacre at Deebing Creek”.
“There is no oral or written history of a massacre at Deebing Creek,” it says.
AV Jennings also says there is no evidence of burials within lands on its Deebing Springs site and that its extensive surveys involving dozens of excavated test pits “yielded over 700 stone artefacts” but no human remains.
Fast-growing corridor
Off the grid, surrounded by eucalypt and tea tree scrub, the dozen to 20 or so people occupying the site at any one time walk lightly upon land they believe harbours the unmarked remains of Yuggera, Gomeroi, Kamilaroi, Darumbal and other First Nations people who were brought here, often forcibly, between the years of 1892 to 1915.
Their way of life could not be more starkly contrasted to the scene directly across the road. On the other side of Grampian Drive is a new housing estate – one of many which continue to pop up in this fast growing corridor of south-east Queensland.
Deebing Springs, as this part of the former Aboriginal reserve has been rebranded by AV Jennings, forms part of the Ripley Valley priority development area, proclaimed by the Queensland government as “one of the largest urban growth areas in Australia”.
When its development scheme was published in 2011, the 4,680 hectare Ripley Valley was home to 400 people living on rural landholdings.
The scheme aims to develop up to 50,000 homes for 120,000 people.
Among the infrastructure and facilities that the government argues make this valley ripe for development are nearby highways, a Tafe and university campuses.
Thulu-Wii, and the other children who occupy Deebing Creek, are bush schooled.
The camp has no electricity nor running water. An open fire flickering near a communal kitchen was lit in early 2021 when it was sparked using embers from the sacred fire at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.
Like their forebears around the turn of the 20th century, people at Deebing Creek today have been drawn from far and wide.
Gunggari and Wakka Wakka woman Kris Bunda was called to Deebing Creek 18 months ago in two consecutive dreams by her dead grandmother.
Known as Yowie, “’cause that’s who I work for”, Bunda lives in a caravan with her two girls.
Yowie has been declared chief protector of the bones and cemetery, guarding an area believed to harbour the unmarked remains of other mass killings. This place is an eroded network of sandy waterways, lined with the critically endangered swamp tea tree, known as “the pit”.
Yowie runs truth and healing ceremonies for anyone willing to participate.
“A lot of people are afraid to come through those gates,” she says.
“But when you do it’s like [a] boomerang, you keep coming back.”
Garden working bees are another way by which the general public is invited to join Deebing Creek’s occupation.
Deekay says food production is proving a means to “decolonising our diet” and continues the legacy of Aboriginal people who have carved out a home here since European arrival.
The renegade gardeners are aware of the irony that many of the staple foods they produce are not native, but celebrate those that are.
The crisp and sweet native winter apples growing throughout the gardens have become an emblem of the camp. Gumbi gumbi are used to treat rashes and other ailments and illnesses. Davidson plums grow.
While they tend to this patch of cleared land, the traditional owners at Deebing Creek say they are learning more of their pre-colonial heritage in the surrounding bush.
Thompson talks of scar trees with canoe-shaped markings in their bark and groove marks in the sandstone of Deebing Creek where tools were sharpened and flour ground.
The people at Deebing Creek dream of creating a future here, but Thompson says it is the past that keeps him fighting.
“They are trying to say the atrocities that they’ve done to our people on this site haven’t happened,” he says.
“The only reason why we are drawn back here is because we know our dead are here and we have to protect them.”
And the living have no plans of abandoning the dead lightly.
“I got the call from spirit to come here,” Yowie says.
“And so you take me outta here in handcuffs or a coffin, ’cause I just don’t go.”
