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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lFilm makes stars of Pilbara sisters
By Yonnene Pearce 12 October 2002 - Sisters Molly Kelly, 84, and Daisy Kadibil, 78, are the central attractions of a tourist boom in their remote Pilbara community being fuelled by the success of a small-budget film telling their story from seven decades ago. Since its January premiere in Jigalong, critics and audiences in countries including New Zealand, South Africa, Norway and Britain have embraced Rabbit-Proof Fence. The film tells the true story of a 2000km journey by the pair and their cousin Gracie, as chronicled by Molly's daughter Doris Pilkington in her book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. The young trio walked home to Jigalong from the Moore River settlement where, under government policy of the 1930s, they had been taken. It won the audience award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last month and is poised to hit American screens next month. Jigalong chairman Brian Samson said the tourist interest sparked by the film had overwhelmed the community. About 5000 people having called so far wanting to visit Jigalong, see the fence and meet the famous women still living there. While $10,000 had flowed to the community from limited edition Rabbit-Proof Fence shirts produced by Mambo, Jigalong had found itself hard pressed to capitalise financially on its tourism potential so far, Mr Samson said. Located 170km east of Newman, Jigalong is accessible from town via an unsealed road. Home to 500 people, its limited and basic services can barely provide for the resident population. Mr Samson says the community has neither the funds nor the ability to secure grants to become better geared for tourism. But Jigalong remains hopeful of slowly improving its visitor centre and other facilities for tourists, and in the meantime outback ingenuity courtesy of the Newman Visitors' Centre is helping meet demand. At 6.15am every Tuesday, tourists now gather at Newman's airstrip to be dropped at the community via the aerial mail run. Source: The West Australian
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its one year on from the Australian Governments controversial intervention into NT Indigenous communities
action Roll back, listen to Indigenous community voices speaking about the intervention |
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