Dear Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek…

I am Jahvis Loveday, a young Aboriginal filmmaker, storyteller, and dancer from Bundjalung country in far north NSW.

We sit within Byron Shire.

Our brother’s late father’s people are that of the people of Brunswick Heads River NSW and the people of the Tweed Heads River, and the honour of protecting our Country, our waters, and our community, has now fallen upon us, the next generation.

When I was only young, that man took us to dance upon the hill in Ocean Shores, one of the many men’s initiation sites that lies within this country – Roundhouse – overlooking the Brunswick River. He fought and fought to preserve that place, yet, we lost it to housing development. Since Council sold it to repay its debt, million dollar houses sit upon that site.

The Cape Byron Lighthouse sits upon one of the most sacred initiation sites in our country, the final one, where boys will become men.

Our Bora grounds have been destroyed, rumoured to be some of the oldest in Australia, and they now lie beneath a cricket ground and Bowls Club in Brunswick Heads. Our Grandmother’s Hill – which Mullumbimby is named after, fades away under a farmhouse, taken.

Our Bora grounds that connect the songlines from the east coast of Australia to the west coast, starting at Nuthungulli/Julian Rocks, and moving west, through Billinudgel Nature Reserve, are damaged. When we were little, we used to camp on either side of the south arm of Brunswick Heads River.

Development threat

Now, it is under threat from the Wallum housing development.

All up and down that creek, there were/are middens, thousands of years old, where elders would sit, and where we would sit as kids, to learn to fish, learn to become who we are meant to be.

We learned that the land is very sacred, almost never talked about. Either side of that river, running down towards Tyagarah, holds many stories, and many sacred connections that run back up towards the high country of the Border Ranges.

I am 23 years old now, and as I grow up, our people before us will pass, and it will be up to me, my brothers, and my sisters, to pass down what we know.

When I have kids, I dread taking them to all these sacred sites, only to show them million dollar houses, an empty field, or a fence that we cannot pass or connect to.

We have little left of our cultural sites in Byron Shire.

It’s heartbreaking for me as a young man, trying to do my part in continuing Australia’s culture, trying to step up and become a man, while witnessing the destruction of all that we hold sacred to us.

All I want is to be able to show my kids those trees, that are over 300 years old, I want to show them as we walk from the river, only across a 100m radius, we have over five different types of country, that hold so much life, so many threatened species, that we will lose if all these houses go in.

Here, you sit at a crossroads. You can make a decision that will benefit stories and culture that have come to us thousands of years before we both existed, and maybe, just maybe, if this place is protected, these stories can exist thousands of years into our future, long after we go.

♦ Letter to MP Plibersek supplied by Jahvis Loveday.