Wave Hill walk-off
The Wave Hill walk-off, also known as the Gurindji strike, was a walk-off and strike by 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families, starting on 23 August 1966 and lasting for seven years. It took place at Wave Hill, a cattle station in Kalkarindji, Northern Territory, Australia, and was led by Gurindji man Vincent Lingiari.
Though initially interpreted merely as a strike against working and living conditions, the primary demand was for return of some of the traditional lands of the Gurindji people, which had covered approximately of the Northern Territory before European settlement. The walk-off persisted until 16 August 1975, when–after brokering an agreement with titular landowners the Vestey Group–Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was able to give the rights to a piece of land back to the Gurindji people in a highly symbolic handover ceremony. It was a key moment in the movement for Aboriginal land rights in Australia, which was one of the main events leading to the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. This legislation was the basis on which Indigenous Australians could apply for freehold title to traditional lands in the Northern Territory.
The event was later celebrated in the song "From Little Things Big Things Grow", written by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody in 1991, and Freedom Day is celebrated in August of each year at Kalkarindji to commemorate the strike.
On 8 September 2020 the traditional owners were granted native title over of the Wave Hill Station land.
Gurindji and the pastoralists
The Gurindji, an Aboriginal Australian people, had lived on their traditional land in the remote Victoria River area for tens of thousands of years. These lands cover approximately of what is now the Northern Territory. They first encountered Europeans around 1844-1845, when explorer Augustus Gregory crossed into their territory. From 1855 to 1856 Gregory led an expedition from the plains of the Victoria River eastward across the NT to the Queensland coast. In 1879 Alexander Forrest journeyed through this land from the coast of Western Australia to the Overland Telegraph Line.An area of about, which included the Kalkaringi and Daguragu area, was granted to pastoralist Nathaniel Buchanan in 1883 for the Wave Hill cattle station. It was stocked with 1000 cattle in 1884, and 10 years later, there were 15,000 cattle and 8,000 bullocks, which started to degrade the environment. The land management practices adhered to by the Gurindji for millennia could not be followed.
The Gurindji and other Aboriginal peoples found their waterholes and soakages fenced off or fouled by cattle, which also ate or trampled fragile desert plant life, such as bush tomato. Dingo hunters regularly shot the people's hunting dogs as well as kangaroos as they competed with cattle for water and grazing land. Gurindji suffered lethal reprisals for any attempt to eat the cattle – anything from a skirmish to a massacre. There was little choice to stay alive but to move onto the cattle stations, receive rations, adopt a more sedentary life and, where possible, take work as stockmen and domestic help. If they couldn't continue their traditional way of life, then at least to be on their own land – the foundation for their spiritual beliefs – was crucial. The pastoralists wanted cheap labour, and workers were exploited and abused.
Legislation passed in 1913 required employers to provide Aboriginal workers food, clothes, tea and tobacco in exchange for their work. Pastoralists were able to make use of the now landless Aboriginal people, who wanted to stay on their traditional lands, as extremely cheap manual labour. On stations across the north, Aboriginal people became the backbone of the cattle industry for the next 70 years.
In 1914, Wave Hill Station was bought by Vestey Brothers, then an international meat-packing company founded and run by William and Edmund Vestey. The Vesteys refused to pay their workers in wages, leading to tensions and arguments from the beginning.
Conditions on the station
There had been complaints from Indigenous employees about conditions over many years. A Northern Territory government inquiry held in the 1930s said of Vesteys:It was obvious that they had been... quite ruthless in denying their Aboriginal labour proper access to basic human rights.
However, little was done over the decades leading up to the strike. While it was illegal up until 1968 to pay Aboriginal workers more than a specified amount in goods and money, a 1945 inquiry found Vesteys was not even paying Aboriginal workers the 5 shillings a day minimum wage set up for Aboriginal workers under the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918. Non-Indigenous men were receiving £2/8/- a week in 1945. Gurindji lived in humpies made of corrugated iron, without floors, lighting, sanitation, furniture or cooking facilities. Billy Bunter Jampijinpa, who lived on Wave Hill Station at the time said:
"We were treated just like dogs. We were lucky to get paid the 50 quid a month we were due, and we lived in tin humpies you had to crawl in and out on your knees. There was no running water. The food was bad – just flour, tea, sugar and bits of beef like the head or feet of a bullock. The Vesteys mob were hard men. They didn't care about black fellas."
A 1946 report by anthropologists exposed the conditions faced by the workers. Aboriginal children under 12 were working illegally, housing and food was inadequate, there was sexual abuse of Aboriginal women, and prostitution in exchange for rations and clothing was occurring. Sanitation was poor and there was no safe source of drinking water.
Gurindji who received minimal government benefits had these paid into pastoral company accounts over which they had no control. In contrast, non-Aboriginal workers enjoyed minimum wage security with no legal limit on the maximum they could be paid. They were housed in comfortable homes with gardens and had full control over their finances.
In 1953, the Aboriginals Ordinance 1953 amended the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918. This empowered the Director of Native Affairs with legal guardianship of all "aboriginals", thus making them wards of the state. He would also oversee many matters relevant to the lives of Aboriginal people.
In 1959, the Wards Employment Regulations set out a scale of wages, rations and conditions applicable to wards of the state, at rates up to 50 per cent lower than those of non-Aboriginal people working in similar occupations. Still Samuel Vestey, 3rd Baron Vestey, known as Lord Vestey, refused to pay any wages to the company's Aboriginal workers.
In 1965 the North Australian Workers' Union, under pressure from the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights and driven by their own Aboriginal organiser, Dexter Daniels, applied to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission to amend the Northern Territory's pastoral award to remove sections discriminating against Aboriginal workers. The pastoralists resisted strongly; the Commission eventually agreed in March 1966, but in consideration of the pastoralists' concerns of what it would cost them, delayed implementation by three years.
By August 1966 the Gurindji had had enough of waiting for an improvement to their living and working conditions, and a campaign in solidarity with their cause had stirred support across the country. Writer Frank Hardy organised a speaking tour for Daniels, and through their networks and unions in Sydney and Melbourne collected thousands of pounds for a strike fund. NTCAR provided support and publicity for the strike.
1966–75: Strike years
The walk-off
On 23 August 1966, led by Lingiari, about 200 workers and their families walked off Wave Hill and began their ten-year strike for better pay and conditions and land rights. Lingiari led the Gurindji, as well as Ngarinman, Bilinara, Warlpiri and Mudbara workers.In March 1967 the Gurindji decided to move from their first camp in the dry bed of the Victoria River to an important sacred site nearby at Wattie Creek/Daguragu. Initially, the action was interpreted by most of the white people as purely a strike against work and living conditions. However, it soon became clear that the strikers not only demanded wages equal to those of white stockmen, but also the return of their land. The move was symbolic, away from the cattle station and closer to the Gurindji sacred sites, and marked.
At the time of the move, the strikers drafted a petition to the then Governor-General of Australia, Lord Casey, asking for a lease of around Daguragu, to be run cooperatively by the Gurundji as a mining and cattle lease. The petition said "We feel that morally the land is ours and should be returned to us". However, in June Casey refused the lease.
"This bin Gurindji country long time before them Vestey mob", Vincent Lingiari told Hardy at the time.
Hardy records Pincher Manguari as saying:
We want them Vestey mob all go away from here. Wave Hill Aboriginal people bin called Gurindji. We bin here long time before them Vestey mob. This is our country, all this bin Gurindji country. Wave Hill bin our country. We want this land; we strike for that.
Billy Bunter Jampijinpa was 16 years old at the time of the walk-off:
The Vesteys mob came and said they would get two killers and raise our wages if we came back. But old Vincent said, 'No, we're stopping here'. Then in early 1967 we walked to our new promised land, we call it Daguragu, back to our sacred places and our country, our new homeland.
The Gurindji stayed on at Daguragu from 1967 until 1974, although under Australian law this was an illegal occupation. Other petitions and requests move back and forth between the Gurindji and the Northern Territory and Australian Governments, without resolution. While living at Daguragu, the Gurindji people drew up maps showing areas they wanted excised from pastoralist land and returned to them. In 1967, they petitioned the Governor-General, claiming of land near Wave Hill. Their claim was rejected.
The strike started having an impact on nearby stations; some had increased their Aboriginal workers' pay, fearing strike action.
In late 1966 the Northern Territory government offered a compromise pay rise of 125 per cent, but the strikers still demanded wages equal to those of white stockmen and return of their land. The Government also made moves to cut off means of Gurindji obtaining food supplies and threatened evictions. The Gurindji persisted with their protest and stayed at Daguragu.