TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
Michael Offerdahl:
So yeah, I'm the publican from Toobeah. So it's a little town out past Gunder. Toobeah is about 50 Ks west of Gundy, probably five and a half hours from here. So we've got 12 houses, there's about 30 people live there. And then the pub that my family have owned for about 30 years.
So it's a tiny little town. It's in the middle of nowhere. No one's ever heard of the bloody place.
We woke up one morning and found out that 95% of it had been given to an Aboriginal corporation that nobody's ever heard of. So it was quite a daunting thing. So what we'll probably speak about here now is just sort of what we've learned from that and moving forward. So as soon as that come about, the community sort of got together and said, righto. Well what's going on here? What are we going to do?
And everyone was looking into it, but nobody knows anything about Native title. It's a really confusing thing that doesn't actually make a lot of sense, and it's meant to do that by design. So to set the scene sort of thing, the resources department, the Queensland Resources Department, the Gun Regional Council and the Bigambul Aboriginal Corporation have been speaking about the future of our township from 2009 till last year in secret. So they actually didn't bring anything up with the public. They passed a heap of resolutions. There's five or six of them there that make all of these steps happen, and every one of them was done to deceive the public.
So nobody actually know anything about it.
So the thing that obviously really annoyed everybody that lived out there was it locked us out of our creek. So there's a hole that was manmade by the government built that weired up a river to put the water in, and that's the water for the town.
So if you want to go fishing, go swimming, that was your thing. We had a town common, it was there as well. So that was a thing that should have been protected. So this transfer of Tooby has come about due to an indigenous land use agreement, and what the part where the Toobeah Camping Reserve gets given away is it's the land back component of treaty. If you understand how the Voice, all of that process goes right from Kevin Rudd, Kevin07, with his ‘sorry’ thing right through. I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, I'm just like that whole thing's an actual process and it's been delivered in Toob or Gunda, windy right from the beginning. So that 2009 onwards, every part of this process has gone through here. So it is pretty hard to describe it.
The council sort of puts a resolution out and then the state government actually considers that the community's support and enjoyment of whatever that resolution is. But if the community doesn't know about it, then how does anyone ever have a say? It's just disgusting.
So our town was created 1,906 as part of a railway expansion out west. So 670 acres was resumed to build the township. Boom, little town in the middle. That's it. Camping reserve all around it like every other town is.
They've come back after the fact with the connection to country that they're stating from 1920 to 1964, which is within the trustee period that their council actually held that land in trust. So 1906 through to 2024. So their small period of 40 years, 60 odd years ago, that supersedes the rights of every person that lives in that community. So this transfer is not actually done. It's not part of Native Title as such. It's the Queensland Aboriginal Land Act. So it's administered by the Queensland government. It's really, really scary because it sort of ties in with the Native Title thing through the IL Uua and how all that works.
But these people say on their website, they come from Stradbroke Island, which is interesting. With the Cuomo thing there, all that information was there for the government, the council, et cetera. They had all of that stuff there and they decided the best thing they could do with that land was give it to those people in secret over the whole community. So they've got themselves into that position.
But going back a step in 2021, I think it was 2023, they actually filed a reparations claim for 25 billion. So this is 800 people that have obviously no connection to the country there at all works out about 25 million per person that identifies as Bigam Bull. It's insane. So it just sort of shows you where it's going. Now, this corporation was actually convicted of fraud, corruption, but however you want to call it, they stole $2.2 million. A million dollars is still missing, and this is at the same time the native title rights were given in 2016.
There's nothing that people can do. There's no one who can go to complain about this. If politics doesn't want to get involved and fight this for you, you're sort of screwed. It's really bad. They'd probably spent enough money there. There'd be a couple of million dollars trying to give our town away.
Now, our town doesn't actually have sewage drinking water. We don't have a swing, we don't have anything. There's nothing there. So now they've put our town down to 10 acres, which actually makes it the smallest town in the world. There's no other town that's 10 acres in the whole world. So a lifestyle block in Goondiwindi where a family of five might live and have a horse or something, that's bigger than our whole town.
It'd be really hard to, as the state government or the council to say, you did the right thing by the people. You get on census data and it actually says Toobeah has a 0% Aboriginal population. It's also scary in that because the Aboriginal Land Act actually states in it that only other interested Aboriginal people get to speak on the matter. So everything's been done to exclude us from the process and wind us out.
So when the transfer happened in 2024, it's about 18 months ago, we obviously all kicked off. We didn't know what we were doing. We got into it, we tried to fight it, and we're getting in the media. We've got one nation other parties involved. We're trying to push this on, and our council spend over $2,000 fighting us to try and make the transfer go through. So the transfer went through two days before the state election when it couldn't.
So obviously we had a Labor government in Queensland. We changed over to the new LNP government. So our mayor is also the president of the LNP as well. So it is just such a unique set of circumstances to put a community in. Yeah, so we've had to learn all this stuff about native title and bits and pieces that we never knew about. We've had other Aboriginal people that actually would be probably from the area from Goondiwindi and other places like that. They've approached us and asked us to help them. So we've been working with more Aboriginal people than anything. It's actually probably brought the community, it was all closer together than anything.
But what it's sort of showing is the big concept, like the Bigambul corporation concept and the council agreeing to that. So it's not a forced determination, it's a consent determination where they've said, yeah, we will do this.
But it's all, again, like we said, done in secret. So nobody knows anything about it. The Bigambul corporations say on their website very clearly, they come from North Stradbroke Island historically. Oh, mate. It's just really put us in quite a position. So yeah, all we can do as a community is advocate, advocate, advocate, try and fight. Get in the media, do what you can, but there's nowhere to go to. And when both sides of politics and your C are against you, you're in a hell of a lot of trouble. Hey, it's a bloody disgraceful set of circumstances. I just don't even know really how to describe it.
There's 15 towns that we're going to get given away. So we went to our state member, James Listo, who's a member of Southern Downs, and we asked him for help originally, and he said, “Michael, I only fight so I can win and I can't win.” This one was at that point I thought he was a bit of an idiot, wasn't he? So we kept pushing through there.
We got Steven Andrews, who was a state member up north. He put a question on notice in Parliament for us, and that actually was basically about how many other towns are affected by a LA. And it turns out there was 15 towns. So Fraser Island, I presume you might've heard about Happy Valley, you're wrong, and other ones out west. So the whole system was ready to shoot, if you know what I mean.
But the Voice failed and Toobeah was the only thing that went on from it. It's disgraceful. So 85% of our community voted “no” to the voice three months before this transfer. So the people's opinion was very, very clear on the concept of treaty. It wasn't a good thing for our community.
It was never going to, we don't like it. You knew that, and that's why you've done this all in secret because it was never going to work. But native title might well work in other places up north. But this transfer in Toobeah is the first time a LA was transferred under the Tropic of Capricorn.
So what they're trying to do now is turn suburbia into an Aboriginal community. So we've got Bigambul signs and crap all around the, like on your way out of Toowoomba, you'll see, welcome to Bigambul Country. If we do a welcome to country, if that's what you're into, well, you'd be doing it to them. But they don't come from there. They say they come from Stradbroke Island.
So the whole concept of delivering a tourism plan and involving the big and bull, you'd be defrauding the whole world, wouldn't you? You're not telling an accurate story.
And what we've learned through the whole fight of this is they're gaming the system. They're manipulating legislation. They're buggering around with stuff here and there to try and make it all work.
So an interesting part about that creek I told you about just before the what's called the pump hole is what we call it, the Bigambul will call it Turtle Bend. So they just made this fabricated thing up and said, this is a sacred place. Well, it might be really sacred, but we built it.
I'm absolutely baffled of how that's a thing. So then they went on with other parts of it.
It was your graves, your ancestral remains or whatever. So they reckon some of them were there. Well, it was actually two stillborn twins born in 1931. It was a flood. They couldn't get to town, so they were buried there. So the Bigumbal actually got to Toobeah as part of labour. So we had labour camps, et cetera, all through the bush where you go ring barking, doing those kind of things. The Bigambil started out, I think they've had three different cracks at least at who they are. So their AAL ancestors have changed a handful of times. They're not even the same from the start. They just go and, oh, that didn't work.
I think they probably had about eight cracks at native title, like federal court, all of them have failed except the one where the million dollars is missing. No one's going to ask a question about it.
But the whole thing is it's voluntary. Our council voluntary did this, and then they got trapped in the process and just kept going. Next minute we've lost our town. It's just insane, honestly. It's like ground dog day. Every day you get up, you're like, how's this still happening? We're being punished for being white. The act says we can't speak on our community. So now we've got a, although we're going to do some kind of town plan or some stuff, but it's the big and bulls town plan of our frigging town. So yeah, it's just absolutely disgraceful to have the LNP though.
We went to every single LNP member that was in parliament in Queensland. Everyone that was running and we asked them to help us. Not one of them would help us. The only help we got was from obviously Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts.
We had Jacinta Price, Matt Kenon and Paul Scar, I think they all wrote us a letter. David Littleproud wrote us a letter, but he did it in secret, which obviously wasn't very helpful for us because we were trying to stop this happening for the state election. So our issue could have ended right there.
That state election happened. They said, no, we're not going to transfer it. So Fraser Coast Council did exactly that. They said, we'll wait and see what the outcome of this election is. If we get obviously a more favourable government, we might be able to have a better negotiation. And so trying to force community consent and then now we get to the point where you are going to have to go and do your welcome to country or the cultural tourism or whatever you want to do about something that it's not true.
It's just not a true story. And that's coming to us from the other Aboriginal people in the area that actually have lived there.
So in Goondiwindi across the river in Bog Biller and Tala, there are people that are there. So it's really funny how it works and what it is. So the Kamilaroi Nation is what the Bigambul supposedly would've come out of originally, which stretches from Tamworth to Roma. So the council, et cetera, state, whoever wants to, they go back and try and make smaller groups. So you make a little tribe so you can manage those sections better and they're splitting up all this stuff and just rewriting history. For us though, it's really unique. We actually worked with, we had a fellow in the council, so he was a director. He's probably like the two IC I presume, and he was the head honcho before amalgamation.
So 2011 was that amalgamation. So we each have our own shire, which probably would've done better for us now in hindsight. So he worked with, he’s like, Michael, we've got to make a progress. We had no idea was going, this is way back in the game. He's like, make a progress group and do all this stuff. So we did that and whatever. We tried everything that he said to do, not actually knowing what the problem was because you didn't know, but they're like, oh, something's going on. It's insane.
So he created a actual, we did up a native history walk, like a history walk of the township. So we did that in conjunction with the council and we actually put it up there, whatever he said, put a gating gear. Here's the standard size. Send us a map of your walk after you're done. I'm actually the president of the progress group as well. Probably should have said that. Yeah, send that through.
So then we get back over to this point where they're like, oh, there was never any community access. There was never anything there. We had a common that we petitioned for in 1931 for 180 acres, and he was granted to us, and it was still horse being used up until 2024, and then it just disappeared overnight.
So we forced, David Little proud actually ran against him in the election with the Libertarians just to get him to say something. And we did in the last bit. We got him on Chris Smith, and we sort of talked with Chris Smith a little bit beforehand. I went on his show and he got him to sort of throw the council under the bus. So basically everyone's thrown the council under the bus, said you haven't represented your community. Right. Well, that's good, but what do we do now?
Do we have to go and get $200 million and go and fight 'em in court? This is really, really bad. If you look at what's happening in Toobeah, look at the process of all of this and then look at your home. Look at your backyard, look at your park, look at your beach. Look at every aspect of your life. But then look at the 25 billion reparations claim that works out. I think there's 5,600 ratable properties or something in the area. It's like two and a half million dollars of property.
So if you put that across the whole of Australia, which is what's going to happen, these guys, a lot of the people that are way far end into the Aboriginal industry, they want 360 independent nations in the country and Australia, but they want to use our infrastructure and us to pay the process the whole way through.
It's pretty disgraceful.
So for our council now say that when they fix a road, it's a hundred years old, they're getting cultural heritage surveys on the road that already exist and having to pay that money and they're getting bled dry. So the reparations claim to me probably looks like a bit of a force over here and deal over here kind of thing. So it's, we're going to go really, really hard here, making negotiate there.
And that's what they've been doing is going around sort of doing that kind of thing, bullying people, because when they get money for free from the federal government, and obviously local councils don't get that, it makes it really easy for 'em to fight because everyone just collapses, obviously. Like our council did. They just gave up and said, oh yeah, whatever. Next minute they give them the town away. So yeah, it's precedent setting.
And that's the bit that which would really, really worry Everybody is the precedent in two here. It's the first time this has happened. It's the first time. This is absolutely insane. And it's a hundred percent non-Aboriginal community that's just being turned into a Aboriginal community. So our town's in the centre of all of this.
So you imagine what that does to our property rights, the value of our thing, like wanting to resell, wanting to grow. Our town doesn't even have sewage or drinking water. We don't have a swing. We don't have a park, we don't have a hall, we don't have a church. We just have a pub. Post office is in the freaking hotel. They've spent enough money trying to give this land away to give us drink of water, but they could also do it for Bunya. The only other town that doesn't have it.
It just shows you how worthless you are as a person. They don't even think of you. They don't care. They don't want to engage with you because they know that you're not going to support their crazy opinion.
It actually is really, really silly to think because you are black, you should get something that more than what everyone else should. We built the country together. We'd all did that. We all did that. Chinese Indians, there's more Chinese people out in Toobeah before the Bigambul got there. Back in the old census in the 1800s, there's about 50-6300 of 'em or something in that area there. So it's just a convoluted thing where they're going to keep going and picking up little bits and pieces. So America did really well with it. They capped, I think about 1934. If you didn't exist before then you weren't recognised, you're done.
And that would be great because we'd be sweet because the Bigambul didn't come into existence until about 2000 I think, or something like that. So the original person that created the Bigambul actually, they supporting our talent. They want to see the right thing done for us, which is really cool, and so does some of the other people.
I think a lot of people actually starting to see that maybe this has gone a little bit too far. Where's it going to end at the moment? If the state government and the council don't come out and start to sort of explain this to the rate payers and the people and tell 'em, look, this is what you're exposed to.
This is your future, and they just keep doing these little bits and pieces in secret. This going to end so poorly. What it's probably done in our community, the biggest story to happen in that Goondiwindi region is this. It's insane.
There's 17 and a half thousand people following me on Facebook. They don't know Toobeah. You know what I mean? They just see this story. They're like, this is insane. How can you do this? Yeah, but to fight that has been a very unique experience because you're called a racist straight away. As soon as you say something, you're a racist.
Now what the council did, which was a genius me, I'll give it to 'em. We forced a meeting. We had 150 people turn up to a meeting. We forced them to have. They weren't even going to talk to us. They turned up there with the Bigambul. We're going, oh, can we just have a bit of a chat about, we don't need to talk to our new overlords? And anyway, yeah, it's just so disrespectful. The resources department's role in it, and they really did make you feel like you're a colonist.
But that terminology and stuff you might see on the internet every now and then where people are, you're a colonist white, all the bad things they want to say about us all. That's the mentality that was doing this to us within the state government, and it probably still exists in there. The Aboriginal Land Services was a department designed to give land away. So our biggest roadblock to fighting, it's been like I just learned earlier there, but the misinformation between the Queensland Aboriginal Land Act and native title. So the gun regional councils tried to confuse everybody into thinking this is something to do with Native Title.
This is a thing done in Queensland by the Queensland government. It could have easily been reversed, could have been stopped at the time, and yeah, why they've dumped the pathway to treaty. They said, we're not going to do that anymore.
They cited the Voice result as the reason. Yet here we are. It's all still going on in the background.
There's other chats going on. Yeah, I really do worry for it, and I think if people could understand how important the Toobeah and the Bigam Wolf thing is, it will unwrap the whole show. They didn't exist there first. They say they're from North Australia, Stradbroke island, the connection to country's 1920 and 1964, they've asked for 25 billion in reparations. Everybody should be really, really concerned.
Pull that apart from where it is now. Back to the, it'll unravel the whole thing and explain it to the entire of Australia of what they've done to deceive us. It's really scary.
The terminology is the same used though in Canada, America, New Zealand, wherever you go, they use the same words, the same process. It's right there in front of us. We could just look at it. You look at it on the internet right now, you go, geez, are we pretty stupid?
We can hear … thanks at the end. Oh yeah. Cool.
