The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
241. The Huge Untapped Potential of Aboriginal Tourism, with Dale Tilbrook at Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery
Dale Tilbrook is a much-loved native food specialist, educator, and passionate Aboriginal tourism advocate. Like a lot of Australia at the time of this recording, Dale was immersed in a delayed NAIDOC Week, during COVID, celebrating the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She also continues to work towards a big vision for First Nations people, and WA as a whole.
This vision is reflected in a joint proposal (linked on the episode web page) made at the time by Clean State WA and the influential WAITOC – the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council. Dale’s seen WAITOC generate a litany of outstanding success stories in Aboriginal tourism, and at times with very few resources. The potential is huge, she says, with the right support and investment, to empower Aboriginal communities with all sorts of flow-on benefits - and at a time when WA, and the rest of the world – need it most.
Today, a special extended edition of the episode that originally aired on the Clean State podcast. I was limited to 30 minutes back then. Today, the full 45 minutes I couldn’t help but let play out when I visited Dale at her Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery.
This episode was originally released as part of a series I produced a few years ago for the Clean State podcast, dedicated to regenerative transitions in my home state of WA. Sadly, the podcast and its host non-profit are no more. But the series of episodes featured such brilliant guests and stories, that are still so very relevant, and not just to West Australians, so we resolved to re-release them here.
You can access the Clean State Plan, and its brilliantly formatted Summary, towards the bottom of the episode web page.
And for more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.
Recorded November 2020.
Title slide: Dale Tilbrook (supplied).
With thanks to CCWA, auspicing organisation for Clean State WA, for permission to re-release this series.
Music:
Eden is Lost, by Selfless Orchestra.
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What's our unique offer? It's Aboriginal culture, and I think it's going to be even more relevant when we get past this stage, because people have started to want to go back to basics.
AJ:G'day and welcome to the Clean State WA podcast. My name's Anthony James from The RegenNarration podcast, on board with you here for this special series dedicated to our home state of Western Australia and the newly released Clean State Jobs Plan. How can we build back better from the coronavirus, avert climate catastrophe and transition to a regenerative, fair and prosperous Western Australia? I speak here with the West Australians getting it done, the thousands of jobs being created, the success being achieved and the enormous opportunities that await.
Dale:I'm Dale Tilbrook and I'm a co-owner of Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery with my brother Lyle. I'm a Wadandi Bibbulmun woman and I've been working here in the Swan Valley particularly with Aboriginal art and bush foods for the last 25 years.
AJ:Today it's my privilege to speak with a much-loved native food specialist, educator and passionate Aboriginal tourism advocate. Like a lot of Australia, this week Dale's immersed in NAIDOC Week, celebrating the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She also continues to work towards a big vision for First Nations people and WA as a whole. This vision is reflected in the joint proposal made by Clean State WA and the influential WAITOC, the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council. Dale's seen WAITOC generate a litany of outstanding success stories in Aboriginal tourism and at times with very few resources. The potential is huge, she says, with the right support and investment to empower Aboriginal communities with all sorts of flow-on benefits and at a time when WA and the rest of the world need it most. Dale was kind enough to invite me to the gallery for this conversation.
Dale:Dale Tilbrook and I'm a co-owner of Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery with my brother Lyle. I'm a Wadundee Bibbulmun woman and I've been working here in the Swan Valley particularly with Aboriginal art and bush foods for the last 25 years.
AJ:irstly I want to say thanks so much for having me at the Gallery and on Country here. It's really special, I think, this part of Perth and the South West, and can you explain where we are to the listeners and why it's special to you?
Dale:Okay, well, we're in the Swan Valley, which is still in the Perth metropolitan area, and it's a wine growing area. It's the oldest wine growing area in the state. It's special. It's become special to me. It wasn't special to me when I first came here, it was just really convenient because we were offered a really good workshop for our boomerang making business at the time. But that boomerang making business soon expanded and we added a small gallery and then we started getting requests to do things for busloads of tourists. So we started flying, returning boomerangs and playing didgeridoo for people and, like Topsy, it grew. When we first started, you know, people came along and said we'll bring you a busload of tourists and you can do all this entertaining for us. And they never offered to pay us for doing any of this. They told us how lucky we were that they were coming to us.
AJ:How interesting we fell for it.
Dale:But over time and I have to thank the foundation of Waitock for this, and I was a foundation board member and part of the committee before Waitock came into existence Angelique Franson pursued me relentlessly because I said, no, no, I don't have time and we're not really in the tourism business, we're manufacturers. But she convinced me to go along and particularly after we kept having tourists turn up, I could see the benefit. And this was just after the Sydney Olympics and we'd had some success with the Sydney Olympics because we got a little swing tag from SOCOG for our boomerangs, which was a great thing for a little boomerang maker in the Swan Valley.
AJ:Indeed amazing.
Dale:It was a real coup for us. But the advent into tourism came from all of this and we suddenly realised we were in the tourism industry and Waytop had conferences and wonderful guest speakers and breakout sessions and workshops and my eyes were opened. I had an introduction to the tourism industry and how it should operate and I just kept learning from there and now I would say I'm probably one of the people in the Swan Valley who really understands tourism and the tourism distribution channels. And the other thing is. The other thing that I learnt very quickly, early on, was risk management.
AJ:It sounds so dry, but tell us why the reality of it was so important to learn.
Dale:You think risk management is just somebody falling over in the gallery or getting hit with a boomerang or something like that, and you know it doesn't mean anything until something really happens. And the event that really brought it home to me was the GFC.
AJ:Yeah, really.
Dale:Because I'd just brought in a whole lot of stock for our summer season and then the bottom fell out of the world and our sales just went down to the cellar and I thought, oh, thank heavens for that, we can't go any further. But there was another cellar underneath that cellar and you know, it was just dire. I think it took me about a year to pay all those bills.
AJ:And it sort of hasn't stopped coming since.
Dale:That's for sure. But we took those lessons on board really early on, straight away in fact, because from that moment on I said we no longer have orders on account. If we can't pay for them, we're not getting that stock. So we were in a very good position when COVID came along in February. When I heard the words virus pandemic.
Dale:I thought, we've been here before and I said to my brother we're not spending any more money, we're not buying any more stock, we're just going to sit on our hands and see where this goes. And it got a bit embarrassing because we kept trading through to the middle of March. There were still people coming in and we were getting less and less stock available for them to look at and buy, and I was thinking we might have to buy some stock.
Dale:Yes, but then came shutdown and you know, those lessons that we'd learnt about risk management were totally vindicated.
AJ:Indeed, and so we didn't have any outstanding yields. It sounds like such a general concept for everybody to take stock of, not just a business such as this, but just sort of in life.
Dale:It is it sure is? I mean, we carry big loads of personal debt in Australia.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:And you know I'm not immune from that. I've got a credit card and it regularly reaches its limit and I keep thinking why am I doing this? I have to pay for it. No free lunches in this world. Whatever you've got, you have to pay for.
AJ:Let's go back to tourism distribution. So what does that mean?
Dale:Well, tourism. Distribution means how do you get your customers and who are your customers and where do they come from. So it's full of lovely acronyms like fits are free and independent travellers and VFRs are visiting friends and relatives. So there's a whole new jargon out there for people to learn.
Dale:So it's knowing who your customers are, where they come from and how you're going to get them. So there are distribution channels. If you want to deal with your customers from overseas, then you're likely to deal with inbound tourism operators. You're likely to deal with wholesalers. You're likely to deal with online retailers, and getting in touch with those buyers, the inbound tour operators and the wholesalers is not an easy thing. It's not like you just go and look up on the internet inbound tour operators and say, look, I've got this great product and I want you to sell it for me. You have to be able to meet them and they have to be able to see that you are a real business, that you're not a fly-by-night operator, that you're here for the long term, because they're working often two or three years out.
AJ:Yeah, so relationships and trust are key.
Dale:Relationships and trust are everything. And there's a tourism trade show called ate australian tourism exchange where you can apply to tourism australia to go and be a seller at ate. And you know, just because you apply doesn't mean to say you're going to be accepted.
AJ:You have to jump through a lot of hoops.
Dale:And it's a very scary thing when you're not used to it.
AJ:Pressure's on, I can never remember.
Dale:The pressure is definitely on.
AJ:Yeah well, so you're really operating across a full gamut of supply chains.
Dale:Absolutely.
AJ:Within that tourism scene, indigenous tourism is talked about as a growth industry and in fact the statistic, which was fascinating to read that 80% of incoming travellers to WA are looking for an Indigenous travel experience of some kind, but only 20% actually access one, and that's to say nothing of the locals. So has there been a shift in this appetite for engagement with First Nations people?
Dale:I think there's always been an appetite, but I hate that statistic.
AJ:Yeah, really Tell us why.
Dale:I believe that statistic is skewed because it's an exit interview. If they'd asked people coming in, you know, without asking a leading question, would they get the same answers? I don't think so.
AJ:You think it's a much lower coming in. It's a much lower interest level.
Dale:Yes, I think. And I think if you ask the leading question, if you ask somebody coming in, would you like to have an Aboriginal tourism experience, they probably would say oh, yes, can I do that? And if you ask people going out, did you have one? No, would you have liked to have had one? Oh, yes, it's. You know lies, lies and statistics.
AJ:Yes.
Dale:Damn lies and statistics.
AJ:Yes, All the lies damn lies and statistics.
Dale:Yes, yes. So I've never been happy with that 80-20 statistic because there were a lot of tourism operators. There's always been quite a few burgeoning or emerging Aboriginal tourism operators in Western Australia and I've seen them start and I've seen them stop, because it's not as simple as being there.
Dale:And it comes back to what I said about tourism and who are my customers, where do they come from and how am I going to get them? So all credit to Waitock and the West Australian government because over the last few years there's been a real focus on building tourism capacity. I mean never enough money spent, but there has been some money spent and lots of success stories. So if you take an emerging tourism operator and mentor them and, you know, give them a little bit of financial support to get the things that they really need, it may be some marketing, or it may be a bus, or it may be computer systems Not many buses. Nobody ever wants to buy anybody a bus because they're too easy to be the asset that got away.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:But you know, assist people to get the things that they need and then put them into those distribution channels. So you need to give people a real help If you want that industry to be vibrant and growing and have lots of participants. Vibrant and growing and have lots of participants, it's going to take years and years and years if you don't actually give it a helping hand.
AJ:And you said the success stories have been numerous and I read some. I know what you're saying but let's talk about it here a bit what comes off the top of the?
Dale:head. Well, there's a company called Go Cultural and they're doing tours in the city and they're expanding all the time. They do tours at Kings Park and they do tours at Rottnest and one of the girls of the family is starting to do hiking tours up here at Wallyanga. And they won so many tourism awards just straight out of the box. So you know they had all the right things right at the right times and they wrote good applications to these tourism awards.
AJ:So it didn't come out of nowhere. They got the support you're talking about. Absolutely, absolutely yeah.
Dale:If they had tried to do what they managed to do on their own, they wouldn't have got there. They just wouldn't have got there, not because they didn't try hard or didn't have the talent. It's because it's just hard if you don't know the tourism industry.
AJ:Yeah, and so the potential? Yeah. Damn lies and statistics aside, yeah, the potential. How are you seeing it? The potential for First Nations tourism in particular.
Dale:Oh huge, I mean, it's just still a largely untapped resource.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:When you think about the competition there's going to be for long-haul travel if we ever get back to that world again from all over the world. Everybody's got beautiful beaches, everybody's got great food and wine, but what's our unique offer? It's Aboriginal culture, aboriginal history. You know, dance, performance, just simple things like that are what people want to see and experience. And I think it's going to be even more relevant when we get past this stage because people have started to want to go back to basics.
Dale:Yes and they want to connect with Indigenous cultures and try to understand what that lesson is from Indigenous cultures.
AJ:For how long have you seen that emerging?
Dale:Well, you know I'm part of the slow food movement as well, so it's always been in my you know peripheral vision and vision. And you know I love listening to Carlos Petrini speak and you know I heard him in I think it was 2016 at Terra Madre, talking about the world marching towards the abyss, and at the front of the big corporations, you know the ones like Monsanto with their lovely seeds, et cetera, et cetera, and, you know, followed by the corporations and the greedy, and then it sort of came down the line and the very last people on this line marching towards the abyss are the poor, Indigenous women. And he said when we get to the edge of the abyss and we don't want to go there, we want to turn round and go back. Who will lead the way? It will be the poor Indigenous women, because they are the keepers of the seeds and the knowledge of the land.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:So I think that's the lesson that everybody is taking on board in some way, shape or form during this period of time, and it's obvious that it was in everybody's mind. When every vegetable seed and every vegetable seedling disappeared off the shelves in a flash, self-sufficiency was like this might be real.
AJ:Yeah, and it's so interesting, given that those poor, indigenous women, they're still the backbone of food supply around the world today, even in that corporate context, yes, so it's no surprise where we're looking. So, in that COVID context, this immediate context, it's shaken tourism, of course.
Dale:Yes, it's almost no tourism industry. I mean, for us we relied very heavily on our interstate and international visitors, you know, and we were good little trainees in the tourism industry because people said, focus on China, that's a huge market. So we'd been out there courting the Chinese ITOs as well and you know, we'd caught the attention of three and they were bringing groups into us and some of them for the first time in the first half of this year all cancelled and given our relationship with China, now you're thinking, was that really wise?
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:Maybe we should have just concentrated on, you know, our old markets, uk and other Europe, and the parts of Southeast Asia that love us still.
AJ:And I guess local too. Is it a big part of what you try and tap into?
Dale:Well, yes, we've always had a good, steady stream of locals through our business for different reasons Lots of VFR hosts, so lots of people who've got visiting friends and relatives looking for something for them to do, somewhere for them to take them, and so they come to us and we get lots of people over many years coming back time and again. People come to us for gifts, and you know, not just local gifts but gifts to send overseas. People come to us for food. So we have a very small catering business. We've never advertised it. If you find out about our catering, it's word of mouth.
AJ:And it's amazing. No wonder word of mouth speaks.
Dale:We don't really have the capacity to be very big. We are involved with another company and big occasions. We will refer to them, and I'm their native food specialist as well, so help them integrate native food into their catering office as well.
AJ:And is that part of your thinking too, because I know it's a part of a lot of an increasing amount of people's thinking to not worry about that massive scale, actually stay connected to a human scale, if you like, and then help others come up in their areas.
Dale:Absolutely. You know, we did have a much bigger business once and we employed a lot of people, especially when we were doing boomerang making and other. You know, we used to go out to schools and we had a whole team we used to take out to schools with us and that was in the days when NAIDOC used to be a bit of a one-day wonder and we'd go into a school for a whole day and do programs for the whole school and it was programs for the whole school and it was mind-blowing and exhausting.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:But we changed and schools changed. You know they tend to want something a bit more specialised now, a bit more specific, and that suits us, because we like being a much smaller business and, you know, relying on our knowledge rather than, you know, sort of putting on the show.
AJ:Yes, now, this is exactly where I want to go to next. Actually Dale around the meaning of tourism, like what it's for, aside from, yeah, a show or just a novelty, because you can't be talking about a novelty with the oldest living culture on the planet.
Dale:No, and you know, the early days of tourism was very much, you know, we want to see somebody play a didgeridoo and we'd say, well, didgeridoos aren't part of our culture here, but we want to see somebody play a didgeridoo. Yes, okay, and there was, you know, that very superficial appreciation of culture. But over the years I guess we've, you know, sort of stuck to our guns a little bit more, got more confident about saying, oh no, this is what we do, but if that's what you want, then you can go and see these people or those people.
Dale:So we don't even sell didgeridoos here anymore because there's no one local making them and I don't see the point of getting them in from Queensland or the Northern Territory, and God forbid Bali.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:I mean you can just go and put Aboriginal art Bali into the Mr Google and it will come up with the most incredible amount of fake Aboriginal stuff. You can't call them artefacts because they're not real. It's just a huge market out there and there should be a law against it coming into this country there. Really, should.
Dale:There really should be a law against it coming into this country, because it's not real and it actually takes away from Aboriginal people making a living out of doing something around culture, because there's too much fake stuff out there and it's so cheap.
AJ:Yes A $3 boomerang.
Dale:That's not a boomerang.
AJ:Yes.
Dale:That's a bed piece of wood painted by somebody who got paid nothing somewhere else.
AJ:Yeah, exactly a whole other kettle of fish, yeah, yeah. So when we talk about coming out of COVID, then, and the potential for First Nations tourism in WA, what really sings to you?
Dale:Well, I think there's going to be lots of opportunity for people to develop many more products on country. People do want to go out on country and they do want to listen to stories. They want to feel as though they're being given access to something special, something they didn't know before. So I think that is our big opportunity, and also the development of real Aboriginal gifts and souvenirs, things that are made by Aboriginal people, not made in China, of real Aboriginal gifts and souvenirs. You know, things that are made by Aboriginal people, not made in China. There's so much stuff around that is not the fake Bali stuff but is made by Australian companies and they have labels that say designed in Australia, made in China. Well, what's the point?
AJ:of that.
Dale:And they say the artist receives a royalty. Well, so what 10%? And who does the audit? And do we really have any control over their original artwork once it goes offshore? No, and I'm sure many people are doing this coming from a good space in their hearts, but still, that's not the point.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:Anything around Aboriginal culture belongs with Aboriginal people. It's like the bus drivers who tell Aboriginal stories as they go across the land. Don't it's not your culture to share. They're not your stories to share. Take people to the people who can tell you the land. Don't it's not your culture to share. They're not your stories to share. Take people to the people who can tell you the story of their ancestors. Or have people come on board as a guide.
AJ:I'm so resonating to what you're saying about the appetite for these experiences to be meaningful connections with people and country, and that that's what we're after. What place does food have in it? I mean, it's your staple, it's your sort of centrepiece. You deal with art and storytelling too, so I'm interested in that as well. But let's start with food and native foods.
Dale:Well, food is what we all need to survive. But there's food and then there's food. Yes, I've eaten some pretty horrible food in my time, that's right. Just to have some fuel in my body to keep going.
AJ:Yeah, it deserves that crude metaphor too of fuel, actually because people often make the distinction now between what's actually food and what's entertainment, like just coloured stuff with calories.
Dale:For us. You know, sharing information of, about food is really sharing our connection to country as well. So I like to delve into, you know, the history of our food, what we did with it, how we would approach it. You know, like everybody wants york at the moment, it's called a bush potato or a native radish, or you know, and it's actually part of the carrot family. So it's a a bush potato or a native radish, or you know, and it's actually part of the carrot family. So it's a native carrot, um, and it is crisp and crunchy. It stays crisp and crunchy when you cook it and it's sort of has a flavor profile somewhere between carrot and gnashy pear. So it's really yummy.
Dale:But I don't want to talk about just yolk being that really yummy food. I like to talk about how our women harvested this in a really sustainable way, that they would approach this plant and they would dig one side and harvest the tubers from one side and then fill in the hole. So the plant would recover and regrow the tubers on that side and then a couple of years later you can come along and harvest the tubers from the other side and then fill in the hole again. So that lesson in sustainability never fails to imprint itself on people who are listening to that story. You know it's lots of aha moments.
Dale:It's like yes you didn't just pull it all up.
AJ:No, we, we saved it just took the cream off the top, in a sense.
Dale:Yeah, we took what we needed and then we preserved the plant.
AJ:So you've dived straight into that connection with art and storytelling. They're inseparable really, and that's the punchline really for these opportunities, for a lot of these opportunities in First Nations tourism.
Dale:Yes, it's that connection to country. Everything comes back to connection to country, and people love hearing something that is genuine, that is authentic, that's backed by the passion of the storyteller, and we're all storytellers. We can't help be storytellers, because that's who we are, and I think that's the greatest gift that we have to offer. The rest of the world are our stories, and it doesn't matter what you're telling a story about. I could be telling a story about a waterhole. I could be telling a story about a vegetable. I could be telling a story about a feature in the landscape. We have a story for everything.
AJ:And third, being connected to country so immediately, so visually and viscerally, it seems to be a brilliant way to connect, to have that be the sort of linchpin, if you like, and everything sort of happen around it.
Dale:I mean we all like to have that be the sort of linchpin, if you like, and everything sort of happen around it. I mean we all like to have different experiences and it's great to be able to offer those really different experiences. You know, when we do catering we'll do kangaroo sausage rolls.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:So you know, that looks like something I might eat, and I've never had kangaroo before, but I will try this, and we try to make everything we do as delicious as possible. So, we don't want to put anybody off right at the outset. You know, if you've ever had badly cooked kangaroo, you know it can be gamey and tough and horrible, but when food is cooked well it's always delicious.
AJ:And that's with native spices, herbs as well.
Dale:Yeah, there's so many flavours out there and it's the thing about the bush food industry is that we live in a big global village now so we can share things very easily. So one of our most popular herbs is lemon myrtle, which is not native to our country here and I always stress that it's not a native here but it's grown here on our country now and the flavours are exquisite. It has those deep lemon-lime flavours and aromas, has calcium. It's antibacterial, antifungal. Have it as a tea, put it in your food, you can use it in savoury cooking, sweet cooking. It has its own little story attached to it, but I'm not going to tell any stories about it from where it comes from, because they're not my stories.
AJ:It really lends itself to a better understanding, a better regional understanding as well.
Dale:Yes, it does, because it's important to let people know where the food comes from. So when I talk about Yulka, I'm talking about Noongar country, you know, and that's our food. When I talk about the yam gardens along Derbale-Yerrigan, the Swan River, that were there at the time of first European settlement, that's our country, that's about our own history. And those yam gardens extended way north into Uit country and you know they were widely written about by the local settlers when they first came here. But they were quickly swallowed up by the settlers because they occupied the good alluvial soil along the Swan River and the good soil that people wanted when they expanded into the Midwest. So the yam gardens were early casualties and then everybody forgot about them.
Dale:I mean, we didn't forget about them but you know, we weren't the winners, so we didn't get to write the history.
AJ:Yeah, but now that's being reclaimed we're hearing so much more about well, in many cases they were written down in settler records, so now we're going back to them.
Dale:Well, like Bruce Pascoe.
AJ:Like Bruce Pascoe exactly.
Dale:And saying well, you know, don't believe me, believe them.
AJ:That's right and that's sort of working. Lo and behold.
Dale:Well, yes, and I think he had to rise to that challenge because you know I love listening to Bruce talk he is a wonderful storyteller, of course, and I heard him say that. You know he got the challenge from his boss at the university he was working from, who said I don't want to hear the words Aboriginal and agriculture in the same sentence again. Okay, let me show you.
AJ:Being the motivation for many. A good achievement. I was so struck and I loved seeing that Robert Taylor from Waitock said this is culturalisation above commercialisation. So the meaning and the potential for Western Australia and societies everywhere to connect in this way is huge and we've sort of talked to that a bit. The economic quote, unquote potential is also not quite understood, I don't think, and what that means in terms of the word you used before, livelihood. And so a bit of autonomy, a bit of self-sustenance and an empowerment.
Dale:Absolutely. We want to hand up, we don't want to hand out. And this is what the WayTop programs have been geared to do to reach out to those people who want to do this. Because you can't go somewhere and say to people this is a great opportunity for you, you should go into tourism. Never works, Never works. If they have got the passion and the idea and are burning to do this, then go in there and help them, and big time and seriously, because you will get out of it a great tourism product. You will get out of it people who are in the in business for themselves and having the opportunity to employ other people and bring wealth into their family and into their whole group which can then spawn other things Absolutely.
AJ:Once they've got the skills and then that wealth, they've got a leg up.
Dale:It is, it is. It's amazing the difference it can make to a community when it works. But again, you have to work with the grassroots. You don't want to be top down ever. If it's there and the interest is there, help it to bubble to the grassroots. You don't want to be, you know, top down ever. If it's there and the interest is there, help it to bubble to the surface. Don't go and tell people what to do.
AJ:So the scale of return can be massive in that sense, because then you start talking about all the things that cost a lot of money for governments as well as the communities, that they start to be alleviated. So it's a win-win on both ends of the spectrum.
Dale:Absolutely I mean, and that empowerment that spreads through the community, employment starting businesses. It happens in other industries as well and people spark off each other industries as well and people spark off each other. But more people getting off the dole and you know when you go to remote communities people are often on CDET programs. Still, community development employment programs work for the dole and only Aboriginal people have to do that.
AJ:Non-aboriginal people don't have to work for the Dole, but Aboriginal people in communities do have to work for the Dole, without all these other benefits, of course.
Dale:Absolutely.
AJ:Yeah, it's more transactional and colonial.
Dale:And very punitive. Yeah, and I do not see the point of punishing people in remote communities for not turning up to an appointment, or I mean, really, where are they going to get the money to live on? I mean, it's not very much to start with, but if you're punitive and take away that little bit, you know what are the outcomes.
AJ:Exactly, we're paying for it in the end.
Dale:Yeah, somebody's got to pay. So you know that other approach of empowering people reaps many more benefits. I mean, I keep hearing a statistic and I don't have anything to back it up. Is that you know, if you get one person employed or in business, it affects 10 other people?
AJ:In terms of the Waitock Clean State sort of joint proposal then to government right now $200 million to $400 million of investment to reap these sorts of benefits. I mean that's not a massive investment to start with for the things we're talking about, but many parts of it are actually very small investments, small fractions of that total amount, and the total amount then for enormous returns, and the total amount then relates to other bigger item things and I wonder what you might say about those. I was actually intrigued. I didn't know that an Indigenous cultural centre proposed for Perth was actually originally proposed to be at Elizabeth Quay when that was done.
Dale:Yes, I went to some of those meetings.
AJ:No doubt you did, I mean. And then to have five regional ones around WA, with that being at the heartland, the gateway, if you like. Does that still feel like a really live enticing prospect to you that you want to see happen?
Dale:Well, I suppose I'm a bit jaded because I've heard it all before and I suppose over time, my you know my vision for what that could be has changed as well.
AJ:That's interesting. In what ways.
Dale:Well, to start with, you always want something that draws attention to Aboriginal culture and you know to have a central place for people to go, and a few years ago I did a project with the City of Swan because they wanted a cultural centre here, and you know you use that word, gateway. That's exactly the word that I used, gateway, and that really is how I would like to see a cultural centre.
Dale:Not to try to do everything in one spot but to celebrate what's right there in front of you, and then those ever-widening circles taking people out to other countries and other experiences. And I think it's time to make use of technology as well, because you can do so much in the virtual world and you can really entice people to go and experience it themselves by giving them a taste through technology, and you know it's. I think people appreciate that. They appreciate being shown the opportunity. And then we have to make it easy for them. We have to have a good booking system.
AJ:Yes.
Dale:And you know, when we come back to what Waitock has achieved in building Aboriginal tourism product, we only ever had the money to focus on the South West and the Kimberley because it was using royalties for region money. So we never had anything to focus on Perth. We had to cobble together funds from here, there and everywhere to get anything to work with people in Perth and you wouldn't have had Go Cultural and all the other wonderful tourism experiences that now exist in Perth if we hadn't done that. But it wasn't, you know it wasn't being led by the government.
Dale:It was being led by Waitock and us going cap in hand, big and far out.
AJ:Yeah, through the grind, yeah.
Dale:Yeah, and get those few bits of money together.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:So if you've got real funds, you can go to all those neglected areas in Western Australia and you can go back to the ones who didn't make the cut first time round in the other areas, because it was always very competitive and the aim was always to try and get businesses from emerging into market ready, into export ready, because we didn't touch on this much before. But tourism is an export market and the export bit is bringing those tourist dollars into Australia. And you know I talked about the Australian Tourism Export Council, atec. People think what does that mean? But that's what it means. That's about tourism being an export business and bringing those essential dollars into our country.
AJ:And at some scale too again. And then you wonder if, connecting all this to more sustainable transport models and infrastructure, renewable energy embedded in that infrastructure, you can start to see how it gets to be an interconnected transition.
Dale:Yeah, and you know, tourism Western Australia had a separate thing that they were doing called Camping with Custodians and that was a bone of contention because we always felt it should belong to Waitock. But they did a fabulous job. But there's only very few sites that got to benefit from that, but where they've done it it's been an amazing transformation for local people.
Dale:And they've become important stops on people's journeys through country. So you know places where you can go and literally camp with the custodians, where you can have that daily interaction with local Aboriginal people, where you can engage with them. They can take you out to tours on country. You're going to shop in their shops, so you're putting more money into the local economy. It's a win-win on so many levels and there are so many more opportunities to do things like that all over Western Australia. You know, if we have real money we can do real things.
AJ:We can't sign off without mentioning this. You're about to go absolutely nuts for NAIDOC week a postponed NAIDOC week, obviously from Sunday. Yes, give us a sense of what happens and what it means to you from Sunday.
Dale:Yes, give us a sense of what happens and what it means to you For NAIDOC. I mean, I've really pulled back on, you know, trying not to do too many sort of catering jobs and those things where you just dash in and dash out, and to do some more meaningful things during NAIDOC and I'm lucky being able to be a bit more picky and I'm starting off NAIDOC and I'm lucky being able to be a bit more picky.
Dale:Yes, and I'm starting off NAIDOC on Sunday by having a group of Rotarians here and they thought that you know, they might come and watch somebody play didgeridoo, my favourite. Come and watch somebody play didgeridoo, my favourite. But the lady who was organising it didn't say that it was. When I had a visit from somebody else, they said, oh, what are we going to do? We're going to watch somebody play didgeridoo, but the lady who's organising it is an old friend and she just left it to me and I said well, it's the first day of NAIDOC, so we're going to talk about always was, always will be. And she said, okay, because I don't think that really meant that much to her because she's not Australian by birth, but she was really open to leaving it with me.
AJ:There you go. I was going to say yeah.
Dale:And I think that it's going to be an interesting conversation that we're going to have with 28 Rotarians.
AJ:And let that be. Hey, that's the point that we've just been talking about. Yep, yep.
Dale:I'm looking forward to having those conversations.
AJ:Yeah.
Dale:I'm not going to talk at them, we're going to talk.
AJ:Yeah, wonderful. That segues probably, I think, dale to something we could end on a vision. Do you carry a vision? Are you animated by a vision for what Western Australia could be?
Dale:Yes, and I think Waitock is a good example. You know, we have hung in there and we are still the only state where someone like Waitock or something like Waitock exists and carries on real meaningful work to build for the future. So I just get excited about this happening not just in the tourism industry but the bush food industry and other industries that exist out there where having Aboriginal people involved is going to change that industry, like the mining industry.
AJ:What do you imagine? There?
Dale:Well, I imagine that if we truly engage with Aboriginal people and allow more Aboriginal people to benefit from the mining industry, we're not going to make the mining industry go away that's not going to happen but if it's more guided by Aboriginal principles, we might get better outcomes. Such as Well, such as we wouldn't blow up two 46,000-year-old caves. For a start, yeah, For a start, or you know, sort of you know, recognise the value of the burrup which is slowly happening.
Dale:Yes, but you know you've still got pollution around there that has the potential to destroy those engravings. So, you know, perhaps we would take that a bit more seriously. And you know we've got lots of big open holes in our landscape. Well, you know, maybe there are other ways that we can mine or restore that don't leave such a scar on the landscape. I mean, there is a mining company that is doing a lot of good restoration work that I know of and I'm sure there are others. But there's also great big holes in the ground full of water now, and sometimes that water is green, probably glows in the dark.
AJ:Yeah, yeah, so you know that's not very helpful. No, but it is interesting to know that there are ways and means of engaging better. Yes, for sure. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way.
Dale:It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be a competitive industry or any of them. I mean it's not them and us. We're better together.
AJ:Thank you so very much, Dale. It's been an absolute privilege to be here with you. Thanks for speaking with me.
Dale:It's a great pleasure myself.
AJ:That was Dale Tillbrook, co-founder of the Mullinup Aboriginal Gallery in the Swan Valley. The music you're hearing is by Selfless Orchestra. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening, thank you.
