Bana Yarralji Ranger Base 'Opened' for Business

The Bana Yarralji cultural enterprise continues to plough ahead.  The Bana Yarralji cultural entreprenuers, Marilyn and Peter Wallace plus families have not rested in their ceaseless pursuit of cultural dividends for family and friends wishing to live and work on country.   It is only the record of Bana Yarralji's endeavours. within this blog, that has dropped off.

Back in September, for instance (it's now November!) the Bana Yarralji entreprenuers suceeded in recruiting the assistance of local Cooktown event manager and Bana Yarralji partner, Vanessa Gillen; together with project managers, Centre for Appropriate Technolgy to put out press releases, cut many many sandwitches, put up a marquee

.. and on the Friday afternoon (streching into the evening), 9 September 2011, somehow everything came together for Bana Yarralji to give thanks, celebrate, and open the brand new Bana Yarralji ablutions block (Cape York's most expensive loo), office block, caravan, shipping container, phone, power and water   ..opening the whole Bana Yarralji ranger base for business.

The Koori Mail was there (see top portion of the article below), many of the the Nyungkalwarra Elders were there;  engineering firm Aurecon (represented by Aurecons' Trevor Sharrock) was there, CSIRO Tropical Sustainable Ecosystems Ro Hill  was there, Invasive Animals CRC research Kana Koitchi was there, Glamorgan University students, Balkanu Caring for Country Business Manager was there, Department of Environment and Resource Management was there,!!   There were lots of people there to finally have a look at plus try out long envisioned facilities, listen to some speeches, and  celebrate Bana Yarralji achievements to date.

Bana Yarralji's cultural entrepreurs Marilyn Wallace and Peter Wallace took the oppotunity;

-  to welcome everyone including particularly Nyungkalwarra elders to make use of the new facilities; 

-  to eleborate on their vision as a hopeful vision of a healthier people taking up more healthy and rewarding living working on country;

-  to seek the blessing of everyone including particularly the Nyungkalwarra elders to continue to push ahead and show the way for Nyungkalwarra to return to live and make a living on country, and 

-  to ask for their support to obtain a commercial lease needed to secure control over the assetts, obtain possible business loans, and run their enterprise as an enterprise.

Altogether a postive and uplifting occasion for all who participated, but didn't seem the Nyungalwarra elders themselves quite understood just what kind of life energy and effort these basic facilities and ranger base represented; nor did they really seem to know how any one of them might go about supporting plus promoting commercial leases nor any kind of leases for anyone on Country (there are none!), let along supporting Bana Yarralji to get the leases they want.