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No trespass, Cockatoo is ours, declare Aborigines

By Ellen Connolly

23 December 2000 - Aborigines who set up a tent embassy on an island in Sydney Harbour have been ordered to leave after a Supreme Court judge found they were trespassing on Commonwealth property.

Despite the ruling, the group, which immediately applied to appeal against the decision, vowed to remain on Cockatoo Island indefinitely and if necessary to take the matter to the High Court of England.

"If we have to be arrested to [be] taken off the island, I'll be arrested and taken off the island," the tent embassy spokeswoman, Ms Isabell Coe, said. "We are there to fight for survival as a race of people."

She added: "We're here, we've claimed the land under Aboriginal sovereign law."

Handing down his decision, Justice Robert Hulme found the Commonwealth had title over Cockatoo Island.

"It is a notorious historical fact that when Governor Phillip subsequently asserted control or sovereignty over an expanding area west of Sydney Cove, it is inconceivable he made an exception of one or more islands in Sydney Harbour," he said.

Therefore, so far as law was set out in Mabo, the Commonwealth Government's claim to Cockatoo Island seemed a certainty, and the Aborigines were "trespassing".

Justice Hulme placed a stay on his order that members of the tent embassy leave the island by January 3 and not return, on the condition they took appropriate steps to lodge an appeal.

Late last month a group calling themselves the Aboriginal tent embassy landed on the island, a former shipbuilding site contaminated with industrial waste.

The Commonwealth launched legal action to have them removed, arguing they were trespassing and that the island was unsafe and if anyone was hurt it would be held liable.

The Aborigines rejected the Commonwealth's sovereignty over the island, claiming that when Captain Cook claimed Australia he did not specify the islands of Sydney Harbour.

They claim the island was a meeting place for Aborigines before European settlement. They say there could have been a massacre on it and if so, it was necessary to find out where their people had been buried.

The solicitor representing the group, Mr Bruce Miles, suggested to the court yesterday that his clients should leave the domestic court and make an application to the High Court of England, where he believed "they would be more successful".

Ms Coe predicted a "long and drawn-out battle".

"We are on the island under Aboriginal law. We have never relinquished sovereignty of our country," she said.

This article is from the Sydney Morning Herald

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