It’s 8am and the Indigenous female rangers on Lama Lama country are rounding up the younger rangers and casual workers for the day’s fencing. It’s a huge undertaking: kilometres of fencing to keep the cattle and pigs out of the more sensitive areas of a vast national park that hugs the pristine Princess Charlotte Bay, midway up Cape York in far north Queensland.

When I was living in town, I wasn’t really doing anything. It’s easy to get into trouble Daniel, trainee

Clockwise from top: Elaine Liddy on the road; reaching for the barbed wire during fencing; Junior ranger Desmond KullaKulla

But for these rangers and their understudies, this work is fuelled by their profound love of country and a deep sense of satisfaction to be finally back on their homelands. Denzel Liddy, a 17-year-old trainee, says it’s hard work but shyly agrees: “It’s good.” Having left school at year 10, being a ranger looking after his own country is a dream job.

Daniel, one of the other young trainees, says that coming back to homeland has changed his life. “When I was living in town, I wasn’t really doing anything. It’s easy to get into trouble,” he says. Instead he’s working with about 15 young people restoring land that has been home to his ancestors for tens of thousands of years.

Denzel Liddy has been a ranger for two years

Lama Lama national park and its Indigenous ranger program make up one of the success stories demonstrating how native title and subsequent actions to empower traditional owners with freehold title to traditional lands is life-changing for Indigenous people in Cape York.

Clockwise from top: Animal footprints through the landscape; a large termite mound; gum trees; pandanus trees

It shows how funding for Indigenous land and sea management can deliver a win-win: sustaining communities in remote locations while protecting fragile environments.

The federal government supports ongoing Indigenous ranger jobs across the Lama Lama estate, and the national park offers some state-funded work opportunities. Under the unique Cape York tenure resolution program in Queensland, 3.7 million hectares have been transferred to Aboriginal ownership over the past decade.



Cattle roam across the national park

This includes 18 existing national parks and 10 new parks, totalling 2.2m hectares. A further 1.5m hectares is Aboriginal freehold and is managed either as nature reserves or as cattle stations.

The difference between the arrangements on Cape York and other parks of Australia is the traditional owners hold freehold title. The management of the national parks is agreed in a very detailed agreement between Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the traditional owners, who meet every quarter for management meetings.

A whistling kite; Gavin Bassani, chair of Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation

This is an actual workplace. These are real jobs which give people access to cars, laptops, boats, training and skills Gavin Bassani

Arrangements vary from park to park, but the idea underpinning it is that the traditional owners will be fully responsible and therefore highly engaged in the preservation of their homeland, and managing resources and visitors. As the operations manager, Gavin Bassani, puts it: “This is an actual workplace. These are real jobs which give people access to cars, laptops, boats, training and skills.”

Galahs flying through the trees on the station

Lama Lama national park, which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary, was the trial run but has also gained fame because it has equal numbers of male and female rangers.

“If it was all men, it would be messy,” says Karen Liddy, one of the rangers, with a chuckle. “If a female is there, it will be organised.”

The work of the rangers was highlighted in the report Strong Women on Country, released in May, which surveyed the achievements of female Indigenous rangers.

The report urged the Australian government to double funding for Indigenous ranger jobs and Indigenous protected areas, commit to 10 years of funding, and support a long-term target of 5,000 jobs in Indigenous land and sea management across the country.

We say we love our national parks. The evidence suggests otherwise | Kelly O’Shanassy Read more

Another study by associate professor Ray Lovett, from the Australian National University in conjunction with the Central Land Council and the community-run rangers and the rangers of the Tanami desert working in Indigenous protected areas, shows that benefits go beyond job creation. The study has found that life satisfaction, wellbeing of families and health outcomes are improved when Indigenous people are employed as community-run rangers caring for their country.

There are also calls for the Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land model to be extended to other national parks in Queensland and other parts of Australia.

Karen, Elaine and Alison Liddy are the backbone of the Lama Lama operations. The sisters grew up in the nearby town of Coen. Alison has stayed in town and does administration for the park, but Karen and Elaine moved back to their homeland, a 70km-drive from Coen. They have been working as rangers at the park since 2008 when it became the Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land national park

Karen Liddy, Alison Liddy and Elaine Liddy

The Liddys’ ancestors lived near Port Stewart, a small gold-rush township at the mouth of one of the rivers that flows though Lama Lama country, for thousands of years. In the 1920s their daily lives were captured in startlingly candid photos by the anthropologist Donald Thomson, which are now in the Museum of Victoria collection.

But in 1961 the Lama Lama people were removed and their were houses demolished.

Clockwise from top: elder and traditional owner Paddy Bassani; Bobby Peter, Joseph Lakefield and Tyron Spratt are all working for the rangers program

The Liddys’ grandparents were taken to Thursday Island and then housed in communities hundreds of kilometres further north: Umajico, Injinoo and Bamaga. “Every week my grandparents would try to to walk home. They only ever got as far as the Jardine River, but they just got weaker and weaker,” says Karen, a traditional owner and chair of the Lama Lama Land trust. In 1964 their grandfather died – “of a broken heart”, she says.

We have come a long way Karen Liddy

The trial run between the Lama Lama and parks and wildlife service had its ups and downs but, as Karen puts it: “We have come a long way and we have dealt with our trust issues.” Nowadays the quarterly meetings go pretty smoothly but Karen says it wasn’t always that way, and there were different understandings about the best way to manage the Lama Lama lands.

Karen says the education has run both ways. For instance, the rangers conduct traditional burning of the land and have extensive knowledge of how to control the fire and regenerate their land through fire.

Other national parks have proved more complex because they span multiple clan groups, unlike Lama Lama national park which has just one.

Clockwise from top: Elaine Liddy at Running Creek, a sacred site where the saltwater meets freshwater; tea tree leaves; ironwood trees that have been used to make bowls and shields by Lama Lama ancestors

Anneleise Baird, now in her 50s, returned to country two years ago after decades away working as a cook in Yaraba. Her family had been removed in the 1960s and they had lived all over the Top End.

Ranger Anneleise Baird

My motto is if you look after country, country will look after you Anneleise Baird

Baird is deeply engrossed in a war on rubber vine, giant rattail and lantana. As the team leader on weed eradication, she regularly sets off to locate invasive species over the vast lands her people manage. They are sprayed, photographed and the GPS location recorded. Then the team return a month later to check they have been effective. “I am passionate about it,” she says. “Rubbervine can suffocate the rainforest if it’s allowed to get out of control … My motto is if you look after country, country will look after you,” she says with a smile. Gradually they are winning the war against the species weeds but the pigs are proving a little more problematic. Hence the fencing program.

The red road runs throughout the park

The male rangers mainly take responsibility for marine conservation, which includes a program of tagging turtles and dugongs and patrolling to prevent poaching, so that the stocks provide food for traditional owners without endangering wildlife. All of the rangers have been trained in dealing with people who come on to their land and how to diffuse difficult situations.

The waterlilies at Scrubby lagoon

As we bump over kilometres of dirt roads to wetlands full of waterlillies and crocodiles and then to the sea, Elaine Liddy explains how they sometimes have to deal with armed pig shooters who are trespassing or poachers hunting turtles. “We have learned how to deal with them,” she says. “We know how to get the evidence for prosecutions without provoking a confrontation.” The rangers have installed a network of cameras at poaching sites to ensure they have evidence of illegal poaching.

Ten years on, we are as proud as punch that we stuck together and did this as one big team Karen Liddy

“Ten years on, we are as proud as punch that we stuck together and did this as one big team,” says Karen Liddy.