LEARNING IN Community
The Site Curators course
Elder Jacko Campbell was the driving force behind the site curators’ course. With Tranby and the Land Councils, Jacko wanted every regional council to have a person employed who could do the site survey for the region.
Jacko Campbell on the front steps at Tranby, 1970s. Jacko was a Dhan-gati man, born and growing up at Kempsey, until his mother brought him and his family to Sydney to escape the Aborigines Protection Board ‘Kids’ Collector’. As a young man, Jacko lived at the Salt Pan Creek camp of the Andersons, on the Georges River. He later settled in Roseby Park, near Nowra on the south coast of NSW, where he married Nan Connolly. Jacko was a tireless campaigner for Land Rights and community control over sacred and significant sites. As a Board member at Tranby, Jacko initiated the Sites Curators’ Course there, mentoring all the students and encouraging them to be community advocates for control over their land and sites.
“Jacko Campbell wanted us to train Aboriginal sites officers or rangers. He hated the National Parks didn’t he. He reckoned they were insensitive and basically he wanted Aboriginal people to be able to run things themselves.”
- Kevin Cook, in Making Change Happen (Cook & Goodall, 2013)
The site curators’ course took shape as a joint venture between Tranby College and Land Councils, funded by the federal Department of Employment and Industrial Relations (DEIR). When the NSW Government were considering their Land Rights laws (eventually passed in 1983), a key community concern was protection of sacred sites and management of those sites. The Keane Report recommended, amongst other things, a Heritage Commission that would oversee sacred sites.
This recommendation was never pursued, in part, because National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) continued to be the lead agency in the management of cultural heritage. Limited community training was one reason NPWS continued to play a key role.
Site identification and recording training was offered by NPWS at Goulburn and Tranby College began supporting students enrolled in the course. By 1984 Tranby sought accreditation for site training that reflected Aboriginal values and that was embedded in Aboriginal Land Council management of lands and sites across the regions. 23 trainees were enrolled by 1984 from Aboriginal Land Councils across NSW. The training included several field trips and involved learning hands-on at various field trips to urban and regional sites, in the classroom and from one another.
Teaching by Elders
Gubboo Ted Thomas, Yuin elder from Wallaga Lake, teaches students from the Tranby/South Coast Regional Land Council Site Curators course, 1984, about the meaning of sites on the South Coast and about principles for site recording, management and protection
Elder Alice Kelly from Balranald teaches Site Curators Course students, about her country at Lake Mungo in Far Western NSW in 1984
Site Curators Students at Kakadu National Park in 1985 with elder Dorrie Hunter from Wilcannia. These students, both men and women, had been endorsed by their NSW Regional Land Councils. They had travelled to the Northern Territory with Dorrie Hunter to meet with Territory Elders in communities there to learn from them about how they wanted their sites managed
The Site Curators’ course was a separately accredited course, running out of Tranby and in cooperation with the State Land Council and it was accredited by TAFE. The course comprised five modules a year and it was based on recognising sites and how to record them and how to write a basic management plan for a site.
In 1985, the students made this joint submission to DAA, demanding the creation of an Aboriginal Heritage Commission. As they explained:
We are the practical expression of Aboriginal demands for control over Aboriginal heritage
Tranby/Land Councils Site Curators’ Course, 1985. Student Wayne Dargan is on far right, middle row.
Second Site Curators course, 1985, during class at Tranby in Glebe. Student Wayne Dargan third from left, teacher Badger Bates second from right.
LINKS
→ Report on the Tranby/Land Council Site Recorders Course in 1985 by course coordinator, David Morrisey. From the Meeting Tree Yearbook, 1985:39.
→ Aboriginal Heritage Protection in NSW, Submission to D.A.A