“The Bunbury Cultural Centre will be an icon in the future where it will act as a ‘keeping place’ for Nyungar knowledge and culture. It will be a place where the public and private spheres of Nyungar knowledge and culture will be housed”.

About three or four years ago a Working Party got together with a vision in mind. Just prior to that Linda Quartermaine set this idea in motion about eight to ten years ago when the land that the Council was giving to Nyungar people she said “that is going to be our Cultural Centre” and that was the seed of it all. The giving of land by the Council was around the ideas of Land Rights and there was a Nyungar site where the golf club is situated at Pelican Point. So the Nyungar got the land and that is how the idea came up to have a Nyungar Cultural Centre. So we started to think about what resources we had and how we could utilise those from an economic and cultural advantage. We had bus drivers, Nyungar people going to TAFE and studying tourism, we had language speakers, Nyungar artists and so knowing who those people were and that they are available we started to pull some ideas in. So we thought about how we could utilise all of these skills and resources that are in our community and how could we bring them to one place and use them for some economic, social and cultural gain for the whole of Bunbury not just for Nyungars but for wedjellas as well. The idea at that stage was to get hold of the Bird Park which was about to close as it was situated in a good environment. So we thought maybe that should be the place for our Nyungar Cultural Centre because it has kangaroos and and so on and there was already a tourism operation going it just needed to be “indigenised”.

When we put that to the Nyungar community they said no because that is where the old rubbish tip was and we had not thought about this and yet it should have been obvious to us that this was not a good place to build a Nyungar Cultural Centre. We went back and put a proposal to the Council in regard to the Cultural Centre being built in Bunbury, sites were put forward and rejected for various reasons. Like lack of access, lack of traffic, Bird Park was not appropriate so basically being left with only one site and it is filling up pretty quickly we had to make a decision. It looks like a Museum will be built on the site we have have identified so when it all happens we will be co-located with the museum. The steering committee for the museum and the Nyungar community think that co-location will be a good thing. This is something that has grown rather than this is what we were going to do. There are benefits to this for the Nyungar community being involved with the museum. There are a lot of resources on both sides that could come together, like traveling exhibitions even before the Centre is built. Get out there and get Nyungar culture from the southwest so there is an option there for development even before the first brick is laid. So the idea is that this site is going to be the tourist precinct for Bunbury. There will be a hotel going up, a museum, Nyungar Cultural Centre and with the mangroves behind this location, it has serious potential. The idea is that the Nyungar Cultural Centre will be a business instigator and support service for small business. Like tourism businesses and they will come and use us as a booking agent for tourists. The Centre will have art, postcards, usual type of tourist materials. It’s early days but we have a pretty good idea. Our intention will be to rehabilitate the area that we build so we can get bush medicine plants growing for our tours. We will have tool making, Indigenous tours to different sites, talk about country and then link tourists up with other tourist operators like Wardan and Kojunup. We will use Bunbury as the link centre to places like Albany, Kojunup Collie, Busselton, Manjimup and Wardan. We will act as a support for artists where they will have a place to come to and do their artwork. We will act as an educational centre and a link for other tourism operators in the southwest.

CONTACT:
Mr Leon Ridgeway
c/- Edith Cowan University
Bunbury Campus
Robertson Road
BUNBURY
Tel: +618 97897777
Fax: +618 97807734
Email: lridgeway@ecu.edu.au