Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Jonathan Harley
In this world of ours, we've fairly well been there, done that. Most places have been mapped by explorers, inspected by scientists and overrun by tourists.
But there is one wild and wonderful place, right here in Australia. The mighty Kimberley, that vast, pristine corner of the far north-west. It's drop-dead gorgeous, like nothing on earth.
And wouldn't you know it, this paradise is also jam-packed with natural resources just waiting to be dug up and sold. The perfect ingredients for a world-class stoush, a battle that will decide the fate of one of the last true wilderness areas on earth.
Story contacts:
For information about the Save the Kimberley movement go to:
www.savethekimberley.com
For information about the Kimberley Land Council go to:
www.klc.org.au
For information about the Western Australian Department of State Development Kimberley LNG go to:
www.dsd.wa.gov.au/6614.aspx
For information about Woodside go to:
www.woodside.com.au
For information about Professor Martin Thoms go to:
www.canberra.edu.au/centres/riverinelab/staff%20profiles/martin_thoms.html
Full transcript:
TARA BROWN: It's already looking pretty spectacular, Pete.
PETER TUCKER: Yes, welcome! Welcome to the Kimberley, isn't it magnificent?
TARA BROWN: A world away from the redbrick views and broadband speed of city life, I'm travelling into the great north-west, the deep heart of the Kimberley, with local bushman Peter Tucker.
PETER TUCKER: Look out the window there it's just amazing coastline, the vastness and the islands, the colours.
TARA BROWN: So its remoteness and ruggedness has won you over big time?
PETER TUCKER: Oh, you've got it one!
TARA BROWN: So remote and rugged that there's hardly a dirt track for hundreds of kilometres along this stretch of coast. Getting around is by float plane, then boat, which happens to be the fastest way to meet the locals. Oh, this is amazing, he's huge!
TARA BROWN: A welcoming party of the friendly... The scary... So he's one of your pet crocodiles, is he?
PETER TUCKER: (Laughs) Pet? Yeah. They're all my pets.
TARA BROWN: And the gorgeously curious. Look at him. Oh, my God! He's beautiful!
PETER TUCKER: Isn't he a ripper? That's a big Queensland groper. I'm sure he's hungry.
TARA BROWN: Will he come out of the water? Woahh!
PETER TUCKER: There you go! Would you like to do that?
TARA BROWN: I don't think I would. And this is your home. Home sweet home.
PETER TUCKER: This is my abode for about seven months of the year.
TARA BROWN: Peter Tucker has been showing intrepid types around this unkempt corner of the Kimberley for 14 years. It's not quite the hotel Hilton, is it?
PETER TUCKER: No, much better than the Hilton - it's even got clean carpet!
TARA BROWN: But Peter fears that the Kimberley as he knows and loves it is under serious threat, so he's founded the Save the Kimberley movement.
PETER TUCKER: It's one of the most diverse and richest coastlines on the earth. We know more about the moon and Mars than we do about the Kimberley coastline. This place is worthy of preserving. I think it's a very simple argument.
TARA BROWN: But beauty is not the Kimberley's only asset. It's also resource rich. And the fate of this place is coming to a head now because of a plan to mine billions of dollars in offshore natural gas. And it would be piped here - to this stretch of beach. Australian resources company Woodside is proposing to drill for the liquid natural gas 400km offshore, then pipe it to a processing plant on this spot, just 60km north of Broome. The 20-square kilometre LNG facility would look something like this one, which sits the coast in WA's mining heartland, the Pilbara.
COLIN BARNETT: This is one beach, one area, very pretty, but one in thousands of kilometres of the Kimberley coastline, thousands.
TARA BROWN: So you're saying, "Bring on the gas?"
COLIN BARNETT: Uh, for this project, yes, I am.
TARA BROWN: The proposal's got the powerful backing of Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett.
COLIN BARNETT: The gas is being piped ashore, put through a big refrigerator and sent out in shipping.
TARA BROWN: You'll see it - flaming flares, machinery, fences, an exclusion zone - does it sit easily with the image of the Kimberly?
COLIN BARNETT: Well, this plant, yes, you will see it, but it's not a heavy industrial complex. The Kimberley is not being changed significantly by this project. This is a pin prick in a vast landscape.
MARTIN THOMS: We're losing an Australian icon, a real gem, a diamond. Now, if we lose it, we just won't get it back.
TARA BROWN: For scientists like rivers expert Martin Thoms, it's the vastness and unexplored nature of the Kimberley that makes it so unique and so important.
MARTIN THOMS: When I come across a river system as pristine as this, but also as the other rivers within the Kimberley, you go "You beauty!" you really do, you know?
TARA BROWN: The Kimberley's grandeur inspires big dreams to match. Dreams of developers and conservationists that clash like the geological fault lines which have shaped this landscape over millions of years in just the same way they do today.
MARTIN THOMS: Look at that. To you and I, that's just muck.
TARA BROWN: That is muck.
MARTIN THOMS: That is muck, isn't it? But it's actually organic matter, it's carbon, it's energy. That's the stuff that drives riverine ecosystems.
TARA BROWN: So what you're saying in very simple terms, this river ain't stuffed?
MARTIN THOMS: Got it in one. We've got the Amazon, got Antarctica and the Sahara and Australia's got the Kimberley. It's 120 million years old, it's been around for a long, long time.
TARA BROWN: Of course, the developers say they have done their homework, they believe they have found the best site to do the least damage to the Kimberley. Do you believe them?
MARTIN THOMS: No. I don't think you can put your hand on your heart and say there is going to be no impact, no significant impact.
TARA BROWN: Not losing one known species to extinction - not one - is a claim to fame unique to the Kimberley. But it's one scientists warn could well be at risk. OK, where you taking me now, Martin?
MARTIN THOMS: We're going to catch a sawfish with Dean!
TARA BROWN: And to prove the point, Martin's taking me on a late-night search for an ancient underwater wonder. Helping is Dr Dean Thorburn. He's an expert in sawfish - a species that dates back to the dinosaurs and not so long ago could be found all over the globe. In recent times, it's been all but wiped out everywhere else except here on the Fitzroy River.
DR DEAN THORBURN: OK, we got a big animal here.
TARA BROWN: Oh, my goodness - look at that!
DR DEAN THORBURN: If you start to feel her twist, mate, make sure you let her go.
MARTIN THOMS: I've got the right end of the wedge, have I?
DR DEAN THORBURN: That's right, mate.
TARA BROWN: What is your fascination with sawfish?
DR DEAN THORBURN: When I first started studying them, I found it hard to believe there was a ray that looked more like a shark that grew up in a river to three meters but then went out and grew to seven and that had a saw on its head. Just to look at it, it's such a unique animal that needs to be looked after.
TARA BROWN: Well, should we let him or her go?
DR DEAN THORBURN: I think we should.
TARA BROWN: Are you gonna kiss him?
DR DEAN THORBURN: No. (LAUGHS) That's a bit too close to the pointy end. She'll just sink and turn and off she goes.
TARA BROWN: The Kimberley has one of the best records ever. No extinctions, not one. Do you really want to tamper with it?
COLIN BARNETT: This plant will have no impact on the wildlife at all, absolutely none. This is clean high technology, clean gas for clean power generation.
TARA BROWN: But as sublime as this landscape is, it's no paradise for many of the people who live here. The majority of the Kimberley's residents are Indigenous, many living in communities that are despairing and dysfunctional.
WAYNE BERGMANN: They'd be lucky to find one person with a job in this community, and this is what the gas negotiation's been about.
TARA BROWN: Wayne Bergmann heads the Kimberley Land Council. He and many traditional owners have given the gas plant proposal crucial support.
WAYNE BERGMANN: This is about saving our people, about creating an opportunity.
TARA BROWN: In exchange, they've been promised more than $1 billion in Indigenous jobs, housing, health and education. The deal has wrong-footed and outraged many environmentalists.
WAYNE BERGMANN: This agreement is more than just mere compensation, it's about empowering Aboriginal people to be trained, employed.
TARA BROWN: Will any part of you accept that the traditional owners have sold out?
WAYNE BERGMANN: No, because I'm not going to sit on my hands, put my head in the sand and say, "Somebody's gonna come and save us and help us." We're taking charge to make a difference ourselves.
TARA BROWN: But not everyone's buying the billion-dollar promise. Do you think their opinions have been bought?
ALBERT WIGGAN: Definitely, definitely, and I just think, you know, it's really sad.
TARA BROWN: 100km up the coast from the proposed gas plant site, traditional owner Albert Wiggan is getting dinner.
ALBERT WIGGAN: Down the hatchet - just mind the shells that are broken in there.
TARA BROWN: Albert is spearheading opposition to Woodside's gas plans. And Albert's as passionate in his views about the gas plant as he is about bush tucker.
ALBERT WIGGAN: Gas plants will come and go and they will be going forever and a day, but you only get the Kimberleys once and this rugged and this wild and this beautiful wilderness will only come once and this is our chance to keep it that way.
TARA BROWN: Or your chance to lose it?
ALBERT WIGGAN: Or our chance to lose it.
TARA BROWN: Albert's convinced a gas plant down the coast will be the thin edge of the wedge opening up the Kimberley for wider mining and development - scarring this pristine environment by turning it into another resources powerhouse just like WA's Pilbara region.
ALBERT WIGGAN: What I'm concerned about is going to happen in the next 50-100 years. If we continue to teach our children that the only alternative they have to improving their livelihood and their self-determination is by sacrificing country, well, then in 50-100 years time we're not gonna have any country left.
TARA BROWN: So you don't think the money, the jobs, the better services are going to be delivered to the people of the Kimberley?
ALBERT WIGGAN: I don't believe it whatsoever.
TARA BROWN: Is it the beginning of the end for the Kimberley?
COLIN BARNETT: No, it's the beginning of the beginning for the Kimberley because for the first time in decades and decades, there is a real hope for Aboriginal people.
TARA BROWN: Given the conditions most Aboriginal people are living in, did they really have any choice but to sell out?
COLIN BARNETT: Look I actually, if I can say so with respect, resent that implication.
TARA BROWN: Why's that?
COLIN BARNETT: No-one is selling out and no-one has been pressured or forced into this. And I've gotta say I think it's a little bit patronising to Aboriginal people to suggest that they are not capable of making a decision for their own future.
TARA BROWN: No poverty isn't equivalent to ignorance, I'm not saying that, but if you are poor, do you have a choice?
COLIN BARNETT: The Aboriginal people had a choice. They know they have made a courageous decision for their children and generations to come. And I commend them for that.
TARA BROWN: It seems extraordinary to me that you can only get basic human rights - health, education, housing - if you agree to build a gas plant.
COLIN BARNETT: I mean, the rest of Australia, I think, finally, is waking up to the fact that we as a community have failed Aboriginal people, particularly children. And I've got an opportunity perhaps no other premier has had before to actually do something about it.
TARA BROWN: Opponents of the gas plant hold out high hopes that the Kimberley can trade on its beauty - that tourism can become a big jobs generator. And with vistas like this you can see why tourism operators like Peter Tucker are so hopeful. It's meal time?
PETER TUCKER: It's meal time - dugongs, turtles, big tiger sharks, all sorts of fish...
TARA BROWN: To go to the Kimberley is certainly to go on a fresh-air adventure. An adrenaline-packed experience where nature is very much in control.
PETER TUCKER: I think a big shark has grabbed your fish.
TARA BROWN: Oh no! Give it back. Oh, it's gone.
PETER TUCKER: Bitten off by a shark.
TARA BROWN: If you've never heard of or seen the Kimberley till now, expect to hear much more about it in the future. Environmentalists say it's got the makings of a stoush as big and unruly as the landscape itself. For Peter Tucker, the battle has only just begun. And he's getting ready to fight on the beaches - literally, if need be for future generations. I guess that is, in part, what this fight is about, keeping this for your kids, their kids.
PETER TUCKER: Oh, I think so. The world is shrinking, the natural world is shrinking and we're blessed, this nation is blessed. It's just worth fighting for. It's very special.
