Progress threatens to
end the very thing it has bequeathed to Broome in Western Australia.
The state’s government has issued exploration rights to a
more than 3750 square-kilometre area in the Kimberly, including most of Broome’s
groundwater reserves.
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Investigate
journalist,
Melissa Fyfe. |
What is now Broome, and is now and was then the traditional
lands of the Yarwuru people, was first visited, it is mistakenly thought by
explorer, William Dampier, who in fact explored the coast from Shark Bay to La
Grange Bay, travelled north and then left the Australian coast.
Broome, named after WA Governor from 1883 to 1889, Sir
Frederick Broome, evolved after it was suggested that the pearling industry
could be served by a closer port in Roebuck Bay and Broome was chosen by John Forrest
in 1883.
For decades after that, Broome was simply a pearling town to
become a small, vibrant and insular town that reflected its remoteness from the
rest of Australia.
Isolation preyed upon Broome heavily and little changed as
the decades passed until the resources industry discovered Western Australia
was rich in the goods it sought.
Subsequently what was once a remote, isolated and tiny
village clinging to the edge of the Australia
continent, is now a thriving town of about 15 000 people, frequently a chosen tourist destination for
thousands.
Nearby Cable Beach, named as it was the place from which an
undersea cable was laid in 1889 to Singapore, connecting Australia to England
was for centuries a lonely beach frequented only by indigenous tribes, now has
its own sumptuous Cable Beach Resort.
During the tourist season, the town grows to more than 45
000 people for months on end and with what was once only a dusty landing strip
with few facilities, Broome now has an international airport.
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Broome not only has an international
airport, it is also frequently visited
by cruise liners. |
Progress has change Broome almost beyond recognition and
again it is about feel the pressure of the tightening vice of change.
The exploration rights granted by the Western Government
allows for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the search for gas and oil, a
process that many question as being wholly inappropriate for such a dry
continent as it uses huge quantities of water and has been shown to contaminate
aquifers, the very thing upon which the progress of Broome hinges.
