The Wallcliffe Dilemma (or The Desacralising of Wainilyinup)

Nestled between Wardandi Country’s Margaret River and the coast lies Wallcliffe House, a site of profound cultural and historical significance.

 

Above: Ancient Wooditjup better known in today’s world as Margaret River, where its dark waters meet the ocean at Prevelly. It’s sacred Dreamtime cliffs, known as Wainilyinup, lie just out of sight at bottom right. Image: Margaret-River-by-@gbeckerphoto-from-Surfing-Western-Australia-fb-page.jpg

 

Margaret River, Western Australia’s world-famous wine growing and surfing locale, faces a big decision. To continue development, or not, of a ruined colonial estate.

In the English language Wallcliffe is what it says it is, a long wall of low cliffs pitted with caves stretching along an ancient river’s south bank just before it S-curves into the ocean, exactly where the Margaret River wave draws surfers from all over the world. To our Indigenous people, however, Wallcliffe is known as Wainilyinup, ‘Place of Dying’.

Wainilyinup is a traditional burial ground. The softer rock forming the cliffs was ideal for interring the dead, and the site evolved as a spiritual threshold between the physical world and the afterlife. Sacred to endless generations of this country’s First People. Like so many Australian places seen as ideal for European settlement, Wainilyinup had been in use for millennia. Then, in 1865, it was recognised by an early settler and, under interpretation of the law of terra nullius, acquired from the Crown and built upon. It was the final building of a man whose colonial life commenced in 1830 and met its ugly nadir with the Wonnerup Massacre of 1841. A building wrought with repaired Aboriginal relations yet dedicated to the continuity of his own particular culture. That which seeks to profit from the same site today.

The histories of Wainilyinup and Wallcliffe House may be said to have merged, or at least the distinctions between them have become blurred. In this way they are inextricably attached to the nearby heritage site of Ellensbrook, also known as Mokidup which carries its own Dreamtime story, that of Mika Darabi.  Ellensbrook was the first Margaret River home of early settlers Alfred and Ellen Bussell. Wallcliffe was their second.

Protection of Wainilyinup is being fought for by those interested in its primary position as a timeless Aboriginal burial ground but was won over by modern-day developers wanting to rebuild and improve Wallcliffe House, grandiose of the two Bussell colonial relics. The intention is to transform it into a luxury hotel.

Wallcliffe House has been approved for development by an overseeing Aboriginal authority, and the work is already underway. But there is a weight dragging behind. A heavy one. As the project inches forward doubts keep surfacing. Is it right to desacralise such a place?

Ellensbrook preserves its colonial integrity, respects its Dreamtime heritage and retains the harmony of its cross-cultural past too. It belongs to and is protected by the National Trust. Wallcliffe is different. Wallcliffe’s planned future is privately owned and commercial. It says it wants to retain its cross-cultural heritage as well. Like Ellensbrook, it carries its own mythology, but unlike Ellensbrook, it is a sacred burial ground.

The developers are acutely conscious of the fragile hold they have on it. Their Wallcliffe House progress blog portrays the delicate steps taken to keep the $21.5 million investment alive. Yet the questions refuse to go away.

Was the right decision made?

Did those charged with the Aboriginal overseeing acquiesce?

Did something change that wasn’t supposed to have?

When it comes to conservation, which heritage do we decide upon? That of the dollar, of so-called progress, or that which has prevailed across all of known time?

 

Above: Wooditjup/Margaret River holds its own dreamtime story. Part of Australia’s invaluable collection of songlines, the story of Wooditjup not only guided people on their journeys but spoke, and continues to speak, of living in the area over tens of thousands of years. Image: Part of the Margaret River Rotary South Bank Trail photographed in October 2024 by Matthew Kluken.

 

 

Ordinarily accustomed to cross-cultural issues and events along the South Coast, we at The View From Mount Clarence have also dedicated time to exploring the histories of all fourteen language groups that make up the Noongar Boodja. Wardandi Country, among the first to be settled, holds particular significance. Wardandi Country is bounded by the north facing beaches of Geographe Bay, the wild west facing ocean front between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin, the Blackwood River as it runs from Augusta on the South Coast to the old forester’s village of Nannup, and a line from there back to Geographe Bay at Bunbury. Along with Pindjarup Country, Wardandi is the smallest of the fourteen boodjas.

In 1834, the Bussell family migrated northwards from agriculturally unsuitable land at Augusta to the area now known as Bovell, a suburb within the rapidly growing town of Busselton. The Vasse River, originating in the Whicher Range, flows  through this region to Geographe Bay. The Margaret River also rises in the same vicinity of Chapman Hill but runs westwards before emptying into the ocean at Prevelly, the coastal fringe of Margaret River town. Built in 1865 by Alfred Pickmore Bussell, one of five brothers and three sisters who arrived in the colony with their mother between 1830 and 1834, the ruins of Wallcliffe House stand as a poignant reminder of the mixed chapters which comprise the region’s past.

I’m trying, but already this post is drenched in colonial nomenclature. Mostly names issued by John Garrett Bussell when exploring in 1834. In the context of this discussion what is of primary importance is the pre-settlement era. Pre-change. Pre-destruction. Yet we cannot speak from today without passing through what happened.

In today’s world, Margaret River and the Whicher Range relate to John & Alfred Bussell’s cousin, Margaret Whicher. The Vasse River is named after a French sailor who went missing in 1801. Misseur Vasse was member to a French Expedition which left names across Australia’s southern littoral between 1801 and 1803. Before 1834, Margaret River was known as Wooditjup or Wooditj Bilya (river) and came with its own mythology. Busselton was known as Undalup, after the warrior Undal. Collectively, Wardandi boodja did and still does mean ‘Home of the Saltwater People’.

 

Above: Noongar Boodja comprises 14 language groups, of which the Wardandi is one. The Blackwood River forms the north south boundary from Augusta to Nannup, then divides east from west between there and Bunbury. Image: Noongar Boodja Language Groups featuring Wardandi Country and Wooditjup-Margaret River courtesy John D. Croft at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

 

To know what we are dealing with, first and foremost we need to understand the mythology. We need to recognise the distance this land and its native occupancy has come and that Wooditjup differs from most places found in Aboriginal mythology, in that it was not created by the great Wagyl or Rainbow Serpent, the same creator spirit found across all of Australia, but by magic. A nod to the supernatural.

When we talk about Aboriginal mythology, we talk about the relationship humans have with the land upon which they live. Distilled over tens of thousands of years there are echoes all over Australia of the ice age, times of great flood, and of survival. What becomes evident is that people are temporary while their home, their land, is eternal. Aboriginal mythology is concerned, in part, with land management, but not of bending it to the wishes of the present occupier by means of clearing and building. It speaks of fallible human existence in a place where forces much greater than mankind preside. The same forces behind the natural beauty of a dark winding river, paper-white tree trunks sunlit against it and soft limestone cliffs etched by the winds of time. Stories of human endeavour, of want and fallibility, play out in a realm where time has no structure, and from these stories Aboriginal law is derived.

Noongar Boodja is the least harsh of all the western Aboriginal groups and therefore was, and still is, the most populous. To the extent Daisy May Bates described Noongars (she called them Bibbulmun) as decadent. As far-South-Western Australia offered much greater chances of survival, this group did not have to play by the same deadly rules. Even though colonisation delivered a devastating shock to their existence, of all the groups they were the most capable of adjusting. If only by dint of numbers. Which begs a question. In time, how will Noongar mythology look upon what has happened over the last two hundred years?

What will it think of the disturbance at Wainilyinup, where the land offered a place to die, a place for humans to transcend existence and become one with the spiritual.

 

The Dreamtime Story of Wooditj and Milyean

 

It was at a gathering of the tribes, a corroboree, that Wooditj, a Wadandi saltwater man first met and fell in love with Milyean, a young Pibelmun woman from the people of plenty. To Wooditj’s dismay, Milyean was later promised to his older brother, so he decided to intercept her on her journey and convince her to become his mate instead. Milyean was travelling with her father, Ngarut when Wooditj found them at Nilup (the sleeping place). He struck his stick into the ground and sung Milyean’s father into a deep slumber before urging Milyean to run away with him and become his mate.

As they reached Jalbarragup they realised that Ngarut had awoken and followed their tracks. He warned them that Milyean was already promised to Wooditj’s older brother and that he intended to deliver her. Wooditj insisted that he loved Milyean and would take her as his own mate. This angered Ngarut, he was determined to get his daughter back but as he approached, Wooditj took up his stick and struck it against a rock causing the spring to gush from the ground creating a river between them. They travelled downstream along either side of the river as it crossed the land towards the ocean.

The old man started to dance the boya, rocks, up out of the ground to create a bridge across to his daughter but Wooditj sung the water to flow stronger, flooding the rocks and preventing him from crossing. This created the falls on the river. As they travelled further, the old man came across a stand of tall trees and pushed them over to create a crossing. Wooditj saw the old man coming across the fallen trees and used his stick to hit the trunk causing Ngarut to fall into the water. Milyean was worried about her father, but Wooditj swirled his stick in the water and sung a fish song, filling the river with fish and turning the old man into a blue groper so that he could swim and wouldn’t drown.

As they got close to the ocean the water began to pool. It was teaming with fish, but they were trapped so Wooditj took his stick and drew a line in the sand to connect the river to the ocean. The fish started pouring out into the ocean with the river water turning the ocean black with all their bodies. As Wooditj and Milyean started spearing fish to eat they saw a rock rising out of the ocean containing the spirit of the old man but as Milyean looked back at Wooditj she saw that he had speared a blue groper and she cried fearing that he had killed her father.

Wooditj promised that if this was her father he would turn him back into a man. He plunged his stick into the ground and sung his spirit back into a man. Ngarut gave the couple his blessing but asked that they leave to new country. His body is buried at the cliffs near the river mouth, and his spirit still watches over the river.

Told by Iszaac Webb, 2019.

Above: The Western Blue Groper, native to the waters of South and South-Western Australia, plays a symbolic ancestral role in Noongar stories and mythology. Image: Western Blue Groper, courtesy Dept of Primary Industries and Regions; Government of South Australia.

 

 

 

The Wooditj Bilya story, as told by Wardandi/Pibelmum man Iszaac (Zac) Webb, is one of creation, of love, desire, paternal protection, journey, hunger, hunting, food, death, burial and the living on of the spirit in the landscape. It recognises the inland beginning of the river, marriage laws and relations with the neighbouring Pibelmun (South Coast Forest) people, the importance of waterways in directing people to the coast, the value of fish and fishing to diet and the deep spiritual connection of the Blue Groper fish to the saltwater people as an ancestral being.

Coastal Aborigines found that if they crushed crab shells and threw them into the ocean from rocks where the water below is deep, the curious big Blue Groper might rise and come to see. They would sing him up from far below and spear him through the head, so his death was quick and his flesh intact. The Blue Groper is a big fish and could feed many people.

The author Kim Scott, who works with the Wirlomin Language and Stories group along the coast between Denmark and Esperance, recognises the role of the Blue Groper to Southern Noongar heritage and storytelling too. The group’s Ngaawily Nop story tells of a meeting between an old uncle and his nephew, where the boy takes the form of a Blue Groper after the uncle rejects him as a stranger. When the uncle sees the boy is the fish he knows they are the same family, but the rejected boy/fish swims away and leaves the uncle alone. You can listen to the story at the Wirolmin website.

So you see, when we find folk lore, mythology or the dreamtime, we find places of significance. Places that resonate with the events of human occupation over a very, very long time. Do we really want to tamper with that?

The early settlers knew nothing of Aboriginal storytelling and cared even less.  Some passing military officers took an anthropological interest in language and stories, Captains George Grey and Collett Barker amongst them. Men we have come to know something of through these pages, leaving us important information relative to the Albany Aborigines of the same era. Settler priorities were different, however. Families such as the Bussells were what we have come to term ‘settlers of last resort’. Once they packed up and ventured out to the colonies there was no turning back. Every penny they had was vested in their new life and to this group Aboriginal people and customs were only of interest if those standing behind them were of benefit to their already overwhelming task of bending harsh agricultural country to their will.

We know, and say again, Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers. Their mode of living did not graduate into agriculture because the country they inhabited was not conducive to it. Consequently, Aboriginal people saw themselves as part of the country, as one with it. Country was their god. Their one method of control was fire. A means of preventing entrapment by pre-emptive means as well as a hunting aid, and yes, also a means of beautification. The early settlers who found ‘park like’ country did not know it had been made that way by fire. To the settler group fire was a destructive and terrifying element when not contained by a hearth.

The Bussell family suffered devastation at Augusta when the house they built for themselves burnt down. Not at the hands of the Aborigines but by accident. This is what drove them northwards. This is what demoralised them, in every sense of the word. What turned them wretched and extreme.

What chance then did those two parties have of finding harmony?

While tracing the story of early Albany settlers Patrick Taylor and Mary Bussell, we travelled to Wardandi Boodja  in 1836/37 while cross-cultural relations were worsening. There, we found Mary’s brothers (John, Lenox, Charles, Vernon, and Alfred) struggling to maintain their fragile settlement amid fear, isolation, and growing hostility. The psychological strain was profound. Lenox, in particular, was beginning to show signs of deep distress.

At this time, the settler Henry Camfield, later to become Resident Magistrate at Albany, sought to court Fanny Bussell, Mary’s younger sister. The Bussell’s had been directed to Augusta by Governor Stirling as his oversubscribed Swan River was sold out. But Augusta is towering Karri Forest country and after four years of getting nowhere, older brother John Bussell set out to find more accommodating country to the north. Eventually, he found plausible farmland at the Vasse River and the family moved. The difficulty they had suffered during this time, then the fire, bound them tightly and concentrated their resolve.  Isolated, luckless and pitiable, with nowhere to go but a place they had to fashion for themselves from the bush, the Bussell siblings were on the very edge of coming to nothing. A proud determined family who would not go down, let alone die, easily.

The Bussell family were another all-or-nothing collective. If they failed, they were ruined. Such a family to becoming financially destitute would shake their sanity. Drive them to extreme measures. Not just to kill, but to kill all around them. Coldly and cruelly. During his visits to ‘Cattle Chosen’, the Bussell homestead, Henry Camfield was appalled by the family’s setting of a shotgun trap aimed at a raider of their store house.

Camfield went on to marry a servant girl by the name of Annie Breeze and together, while at Albany, began the Camfield School for Aboriginal Children. Far from perfect, they were at least committed to peaceful change.

Though the Bussell family were well-educated, devout, and socially prominent, their isolation and fear exposed the darker side of colonial life. Their anxieties led them to distrust even their own servants and when it came to the Aborigines pushed them to acts of inhumanity. Like many others across early Australia, moral collapse stood at the heart of the frontier experience and genocide, consensus that Aboriginal Australia ought to be eradicated, came about.

As the Bussell family expanded their farms most of the Augusta settlers moved to be nearer and conflict with the Wardandi people worsened. Led by inaugurating governor, James Stirling, who was desperate to keep his colonial venture from failing, traditional lands, hunting grounds, and water sources were taken or destroyed, leading to repeated clashes. The most significant of these was the Pinjarra putdown of October 1834 which set the precedent for what became the West Australian war against the Aborigines which continued throughout the state for the next 80 years.

James Stirling’s assault on Pinjarra was signal for the Bussell family (as it was for all settlers breaking new country) to no longer approach Aboriginal relations with caution and care, but to act punitively in the face of any and all resistance.

From that time, several of the Bussell and accompanying settler family encounters turned violent, with many participating in punitive raids and killings. The most devastating in which the Bussell family participated was the Wonnerup massacre of 1841.

These tragedies led to the deployment of soldiers in the region, but the damage was already done. The legacy of fear and violence which followed reflects the destructive consequences of colonisation. Not only for the Wardandi but for the settlers themselves, whose humanity was corroded.  Governor James Stirling, who is likely to lose a great deal of status as we reappraise Western Australia’s two-hundred-year history over the coming five years, intended Pinjarra to send a message to all Noongar boodjas. Instead, it sent a message to all settler families that it was okay to apply the law of the gun.

For ten years, from 1834, the area now known as Busselton was a place of perpetual nightmare for all concerned and Alfred Pickmore Bussell was not excepted.

Above: Mias in Wardandi Country drawn by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, artist aboard Nicolas Baudin’s French Expedition of Discovery which visited Geographe Bay in the region of the Vasse River in 1801. The drawings, unknown to Western Australian interests, were held by the Lesueur family for over 200 years. Image: Published in The West Australian newspaper 26 November 2018.

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Now knowing something of what occurred during the darkest of times we shake ourselves from all that and move a decade forward to when Alfred, youngest of the brothers, then in his mid 30s and very keen to start a family, found himself a bride.

Today’s Geographe Gazette website summarises this for us.

Alfred Pickmore Bussell: Architect of Busselton’s Early Development – Geographe Gazette

In 1850, Alfred Pickmore Bussell married Ellen Heppingstone, a 16-year-old raised in the colony and accustomed to bush life. Ellen proved to be an “ideal wife,” a crucial partner in Alfred’s endeavors. However, some, including Alfred’s elder brother John Garrett, viewed the marriage as “beneath him in rank,” reflecting societal hierarchies of the time. The year after their marriage, Alfred and Ellen established their first independent home at Broadwater, in what is now West Busselton. Broadwater Homestead, a simple limestone cottage, was built for Alfred between 1846 and 1848. Around 1855-1857, Ellen’s dissatisfaction with the Vasse led them to move to Ellensbrook, near Margaret River, in 1857. There, they built a wattle and daub home, facing isolation and scarce supplies. A personal tragedy, the death of an infant son, deeply impacted Alfred and spurred his “most ambitious project”: the construction of Wallcliffe as a “gentleman’s residence”. The family moved to Wallcliffe in 1865, and it became the center of a 60,000-acre pastoral empire. Alfred and Ellen had a large family of six sons and eight daughters. Their daughter, Grace Bussell, gained renown for rescuing survivors from the shipwrecked Georgette in 1876. Despite isolation, the family was known for “compassion and kindness,” even rearing an abandoned Aboriginal baby. However, this contrasts sharply with the family’s documented involvement in violent massacres against Aboriginal communities, highlighting the complex and paradoxical nature of colonial society.

So, in 1850, Alfred married 16-year-old Ellen Heppingstone, the daughter of an ex-soldier who was loyal to Captain John Molloy, original Resident Magistrate at Augusta from May 1830. The Heppingstones had followed Captain Molloy out of Augusta to the Vasse River in 1839, five years after the Bussells. They settled at Wonnerup. Ellen was eight years old when the Wonnerup Massacre (in which John Molloy played a significant role) took place.

Alfred and Ellen first moved from the ‘Cattle Chosen‘ homestead to Broadwater (West Busselton) then, in 1857, to Mokidup (nearly 50 miles away on the west coast), where Alfred had received a ten-acre grant. Yes, Mokidup, an Aboriginal camping ground. Alfred gave it the English name Ellensbrook and the couple commenced building, farming and raising a family there. This time, as strange as it seems, under agreeable relations with the Wardandi.

In the meantime, other of the original Augusta settler group settled the region. One couple were Elija and Ann Dawson who took up land at ‘Dunnsbro’, later Dunsborough. The village may have taken its name from an American whaler as many American ships were active in the area at the time. One whaler went by the name of Isaacs and in 1845 he left a son, a child to an unknown Aboriginal woman thought to have died giving birth. This child was brought up by Ann Dawson who had just had her own boy. Samuel Isaacs and Elija Dawson grew up together at the Dawson property known as ‘Westbrook’.

Over the years Alfred and Ellen Bussell brought up a large family, the children mixing with the Aborigines living around them. In time Alfred accumulated more land to ultimately establish a 60 000-acre pastoral holding. In 1865, the building of Wallcliffe commenced just a few miles to the south. Around this time Samuel Isaacs came to work for Alfred Bussell and it was the famous partnership between Sam and the Bussell’s 5th daughter Grace, which led the famous rescue of the passengers and crew aboard the stricken steamer Georgette at Redgate Beach on 1st December 1876.

The relationship between Sam Isaacs and his son, Fred, with Grace, Frances-Louisa and Filumena Bussell brought forward the reputation of Wallcliffe House as a place of cross-cultural harmony. As with so many instances over the years, it was the children who developed and maintained cross-cultural relations. The Isaacs maintained their links to Wardandi boodja. They spoke the language and the Bussell daughters learned with them, carrying those old stories down. Sam and Fred Isaacs are responsible for the reputation of Wallcliffe House as a place of positive cross-cultural exchange. Local writer Jinni Wilson in her website Earth Sea Star provides greater detail on the Bussell/Isaacs connection and if you have come this far then you should certainly visit Earth Sea Star’s Wallcliffe – People and Place page to gain a richer understanding.

Above: Wallcliffe House in its five-chimney original form. Water colour by E. Fish. Date unknown. Image: Courtesy of Collections WA – City of Busselton

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Another name connected with the Bussell family is Brockman. Frances Louisa Bussell married John Brockman in 1870. There were no children but the Brockman name starts appearing in the Vasse district from this time, branching down the Wardandi line. A descendant today is Wardandi elder Vivian Brockman Webb who, along with her family, in recent years has been active in bringing the Wooditj story to front of mind among the residents of Margaret River. Vivian Brockman Webb goes by the Aboriginal name ‘Dwardinan’ claiming Wardandi heritage back to her 3x Great Grandmother, ‘Sugar Rag’.

A recent Instagram dedication offers the following. . .

𝘝𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘉𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺. 𝘝𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯’𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 ‘𝘚𝘶𝘨𝘢𝘳 𝘙𝘢𝘨’ 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘱 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘉𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘱, 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘱, 𝘓𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘘𝘶𝘪𝘫𝘶𝘱, 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 P𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵, 𝘓𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘑𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘵 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘬.

𝘓𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘘𝘶𝘪𝘫𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘚𝘶𝘨𝘢𝘳 𝘙𝘢𝘨 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘺 𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 ‘𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘑𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘺’ 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘴𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘝𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯’𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘉𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘖𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘵, 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘴 ‘𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩’.

 

Left: Dwardinan’s Wardandi/Pibelmen heritage works backward to the Augusta area and eastwards, inland and along the coast, as far as the Frankland River. Her people will have been familiar with the first settlers as they arrived at Augusta from 1830, as they pushed up the Blackwood River and westwards to Wooditj Bilya where it starts its run to the sea. They will also have seen the Muir family push up from Albany towards Manjimup from the 1850s. If we could ask her ancestors, they’d be able to tell us what happened to the Pibelmen/Menang, otherwise known as the Murrum,  the coastal Aborigines who lived between Albany and Augusta. Where did they go? Their marks and stories are everywhere, but few claim ancestry from this heavily forested area. Image: Courtesy of the Margaret River Photographer, Martine Perret.

 

 

Dwardinan says ‘Wardandi spirituality is rooted in the deep connection between the human and spiritual sphere. Wardandi people’s bond with nature and boodja is profound connection to the spiritual entities associated with the land. The concept of ‘kora‘ (the distant past) remains intricately linked to ‘yey‘ (the present). This connection is expressed through the care for ‘boodja‘ and respecting lore, passed down through generations via an oral tradition of storytelling’.

Spoken stories find it hard to compete with ‘written history’ and so it is the Wallcliffe House blog seeks to document the history of the progress from burnt-out shell to $21.5 million luxury heritage listed hotel. So too, therefore, did Vivian, Mitchella Hutchins and Iszaac Webb set the Wooditj Bilya story not only to page but in the form of a children’s stage play too. Combatting the might of recorded history as Western civilisation sees it must be fought in the trenches, so to speak. And thus, here at The View From Mount Clarence we pull our truth-telling hat firmly down over our hairline, set our fingers to the keyboard and attempt to the do the same.

The battle between development and heritage conservation is an on-going one. The pressures of holding on to a past usurped by technology, economic progress and the desire for aspirational experiences in the form of luxury heritage-listed hotels, are immense. To succeed the internet needs to be populated with more work centred around defending traditional values.

 

Above: Wallcliffe House as viewed from the air in 2018. Image: Augusta Margaret River Times, 20 February 2024

 

 

The Wardandi “Saltwater People,” hold that the land and sea are forever intertwined. The Margaret River area, Wooditjup, is a sacred meeting place where the landscape, waterways, and ocean are animated by ancestral beings and Dreaming stories. This spiritual relationship is foregrounded by the belief that human activity must honor and maintain the balance of the land, listening to nature and always walking gently upon the earth.​

The land surrounding Wallcliffe House, which includes bushland, cliffs, caves, and vistas by the Margaret River, embodies both natural beauty and cultural heritage. The region is part of Wardandi Boodja and holds particular significance due to its location at the junction of river, bush and sea—central elements in Wardandi cosmology and spirituality. These sites are associated with Dreaming stories, spiritual entities, and the ongoing presence of ancestral spirits. Caring for and respecting this country is a key part of Wardandi lore and continues to be passed down through oral storytelling and cultural practices.​

Stories such as those of Wooditj, the ancestral creator who shaped the Margaret River, and the Dreaming spirits associated with the caves and waterways of that limestone coast reinforce the deep-time spiritual connection to the region. Such stories guide the Wardandi’s relationship to natural resources and define sacred sites, reinforcing obligations of respect and stewardship for future generations.​

Modern custodians such as Dwardinan continue to invite visitors and residents of the Margaret River region to recognize and respect this ongoing spiritual connection. They urge everyone to ‘listen to Boodja’ and walk softly, so that the land and its stories endure.​

The land around Wallcliffe House is not just a historic or beautiful location, it is intrinsic to the spirituality, identity, and cultural heritage of the Wardandi people, whose traditions and beliefs continue to shape how the land is understood and cared for today.

Aboriginal dispossession, cultural trauma, and the enduring struggle to protect sacred land from the threat of all-engulfing economic persuasion remain the central tenets of Aboriginal resistance. Tension between development and cultural preservation, the historical roots of Aboriginal resistance, and the internal divisions that arise when economic opportunity collides with spiritual duty, are evident in the ongoing struggle of Vivian Brockman Webb and her efforts to liberate Wainilyinup, ‘The Dying Place’, from contamination at the hands of present-day demand.

It is a story not just about a building, but about a people’s relationship to Country, and the ongoing challenge of remaining true to traditional culture in a world that continues to value profit over heritage.

Wallcliffe House, Alfred & Ellen Bussell’s family homestead built in 1865 was destroyed by bushfire in 2011. Wainilyinup, Place of Dying, took back what was only ever passing through. Land is eternal, people and their possessions temporary.

Some things, as Dwardinan recently put it, just need to be left alone.