Paddy Roe (1912–2001), also known as Lulu, was a Nyikina (also spelled Nyigina) Aboriginal man born and raised in the bush by his tribal father, Bulu, and mother, Wallia, at Roebuck Plains on Yawuru country in the remote West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Widely respected for his wisdom and cultural knowledge, he was an acknowledged advocate of reconciliation.See speech by Senator Aden Ridgeway in the Parliament of Australia’s Hansard (Senate) transcript of 20 August 2001. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F2001-08-20%2F0169%22;src1=sm1 His conception totem (jalnga) was Yungurugu (or Yoongoorookoo),RiverOfLife, M., Pelizzon, A., Poelina, A., Akhtar-Khavari, A., Clark, C., Laborde, S., Macpherson, E., O’Bryan, K., O’Donnell, E., & Page, J. (2021). Yoongoorrookoo: The emergence of ancestral personhood. Griffith Law Review, 30(3), 505–529. https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2021.199 6882, the Rainbow Serpent. He had strong maban power.Maban is the name used by Aboriginal people of the West Kimberley for a man who has access to supernatural powers of one or more ancestral beings of the Dreaming and has been endowed with the ability to utilise those powers in a variety of ways, usually in support of community well-being. The name of the female equivalent is janggungurr. Across Australia, there are a variety of names for maban such as karadji, gingin, kurdaitcha and bán-man. Commonly known as a ‘clever man’, a maban is also referred to in the literature as a ‘medicine man’ or ‘doctor’ though their functions are much broader. In the Americas, Siberia and other places, the equivalent is a shaman.
Lulu was the apical ancestor of the Goolarabooloo peopleGoolarabooloo (Goolara = west coast/sundown/seaside; booloo = people/place) is both a generic name for saltwater societies of the West Kimberley region of Western Australia and the name of the community whose apical ancestors are Paddy Roe and his wife Mary Pikalili. The spelling ‘Goolarabooloo’ is in current general use by its members and the broader society. In his 1940s work, archaeologist-anthropologist Norman Tindale referred to the Goolarabooloo as the Kularapulu. Daisy Bates, in her 1899-1902 fieldwork called them the Koolarrbulloo and the Koolarabooloo. A 1983 book attributed to Paddy Roe (Stephen Muecke editor) is titled Gularabulu. and the founder of the Lurujarri Heritage Trail on the West Kimberley's Dampier Peninsula (part of the Heritage Trails Network of Western Australia). Though speaking seven Aboriginal languages plus Malay and ‘Broome English’, he chose not to learn to read or write, saying it inhibited the unimpeded flow of ‘true feeling’, namely, the knowing emanating from, in his words, the ground at "the bottom of everything.”Total Reset: Realigning with our timeless holistic blueprint for living, p.x.
When Bulu died, Lulu was still a young boy and the family decided to safeguard him from the dangers of the encroaching colonialists by sending him into the desert, beyond their reach. He was accompanied by his older tribal brother and lifelong mentor, the widely renowned maban man Joe NanganEthnologist Dr Helmut Petri, leader of the 1938 German Frobenius expedition to the Kimberley, wrote of Joe Nangan, “From his earliest youth he had been regarded in the whole northwest as a maban wánggu-djáding, a medicine man of the first rank”. See Pawsey, M. (trans.) & Akerman, K. (ed.) 2015 Cologne to the Kimberley: Studies of Aboriginal Life in Northwest Australia by Five German Scholars in the First Half of the 20th Century. Carlisle, Western Australia: Hesperian Press. and several other family members.
They re-emerged eight years later, Lulu now a fully initiated Lawman having been taken into the Law at an unusually young age and passing through all the stages. The returnees camped on Roebuck Plains, which had become a cattle station, and cared for the last of the old Nyikina people while working as station hands. Lulu was soon an accomplished drover and installer/repairer of windmills, so dependable he was left in charge of the station when the manager was on holidays.The Children's Country: Creation of a Goolarabooloo Future in North-West Australia
Though illiterate, he collaborated with non-Indigenous people in writing several books. The first, Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley, was published in collaboration with Professor Stephen Muecke. It won the Western Australian Week Literary Award in 1985, and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award the same year.
In 1991, Greg Campbell was invited by Lulu to live on Country and work with him and the Goolarabooloo people to write one book designed to share key elements of the Original Knowledge for people to live in balance with themselves, one another and the world around them, maintaining the balance of all life. The 31-year collaboration extended well beyond Lulu’s lifetime, culminating with the 2022 book Total Reset: Realigning with our timeless holistic blueprint for livingThe printed book and the 2023 audiobook by Mark Coles Smith can be previewed at http://www.totalreset.com.au and 36-hour audiobook narrated by Nyikina man, accomplished actor and creative, Mark Coles Smith.
Roe was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 1990 Australia Day Honours for "service to Aboriginal welfare".
Marriage and custodianship of Country Source:The word ‘Country’ is capitalised to mean it encompasses the totality of reality in that place: the material world of land, sea and sky, all animate and inanimate entities, all phenomena (wind, fire, etc.) and all non-material energies-powers-beings. In essence, ‘Country’ is the entire natural world (visible and invisible). Considered to be conscious and aware, it is often referred to as ‘Living Country’.
Circa 1931, Lulu ran away to the Damper Peninsula with his wife-to-be, Mary Pikalili, a traditional Karajarri woman. They passed through Rubibi (Broome, part of the land of the Djukun people), continuing north into Ngumbarl and Jabbirjabbir country where they met Walmadan, the powerful, much-respected leader of the Jabbirjabbir people and two equally powerful senior Jabbirjabbir Law women, Nabi and Gardilagan, both janggungurr (female equivalent of a maban man).
The Jabbirjabbir Law women informed Mary she would have two children (to join young Thelma who Mary had with her previous husband). They said two rayi (spirit babies) belonging to Nabi could not enter Nabi because she was too old for children, so they would both enter Mary. She subsequently gave birth to Teresa and Margaret.Stephen Muecke & Paddy Roe, The Children’s Country: Creation of a Goolarabooloo Future in North-West Australia. 2020. London: Rowman & Littlefield. p.xiv-xv
The Law women further explained that Mary’s children would have many children who would have many more. Once again, there would be a big mob to exercise custodial care of Country. This was extremely important to the Jabbirjabbir elders because all their young people had been removed by the authorities and placed in missions; the first of the Stolen Generations. Only the old people remained with none to carry on their traditions and care for Country as their ancestors had done for tens of thousands of years.
It is why the old people began walking young Lulu and Mary back and forth through Country (from Broome to Gariyan, south of Carnot Bay) showing them the hundreds of sites along the coast, sharing the associated songs and stories, introducing them to the mamara trees and murruru places (flora and rocks with special power) and providing other essential cultural information. It was how Lulu, Mary and their descendants became the acknowledged custodians of Minyirr Djukun, Ngumbarl and Jabbirjabbir Country (up to Gariyan).Greg Campbell with Lulu and the Goolarabooloo family, Total Reset – realigning with our timeless holistic blueprint for living. 2023 (1st ed., rev.). Dunsborough, Western Australia: Total Reset. pp.240-45
Protecting Living Country
As the West Kimberley came under increasing pressure from developers, miners and tourism, Lulu’s recognised authority to speak for Country meant many of those who wanted to know what might be possible came to his ‘office’, a tamarind tree in Dora Street, Broome where they would find him sitting beneath its shade on the red pindan carving boomerangs, shields and lizards or making decorations for ceremonies.
Despite having witnessed horrors perpetrated on Indigenous people and having personally experienced the oppressive ways of the usurpers he carried no anger or bitterness and remained steadfast in his belief that the way forward meant everyone learning to walk together, starting with the experience of ‘Living Country’.Total Reset, op. cit., pp.166, 171, 194, 461
In 1974, informed by knowledgeable local Aboriginal people that Paddy Roe and his family were the area’s recognised custodians, archaeologist-anthropologist Kim Akerman carried out with them the first archaeological survey of a 16-kilometre stretch of coast north of Minariny (Coulomb Point), recording 36 old Aboriginal camping sites and workshops.Kim Akerman. 1975. ‘Aboriginal campsites on the western coast of Dampierland, Western Australia’. Occasional Papers in Anthropology 4, University of Queensland.
Other collaborative efforts followed to record sites and cultural knowledge.Kim Akerman. 1976. ‘Notes on the experimental manufacture of long blades and points by percussion flaking’. Occasional Papers in Anthropology. Anthropology Museum University of Queensland. 6: 117-28. Kim Akerman. 1981. ‘Horde areas and mythological sites between James Price Point and Coconut Well on the west coast of Dampierland, WA’. Kimberley Land Council, Broome. Kim Akerman & Peter Bindon. 1983. ‘Evidence of Aboriginal lithic experimentation on the Dampierland Peninsula’, in Smith, M. (ed.) Archaeology at ANZAAS 1983. Perth: Western Australian Museum, pp. 75- 80 In 1981 South African archaeologist Dr Patricia Vinnicombe, famous for her work with rock art, was introduced to Lulu by Akerman and, on behalf of the WA Museum, worked with him and the family to record more information about the sites and mythology.
To help bring people together and protect the lands and waters for which he and the family carried the cultural knowledge and exercised custodial responsibilities Lulu established the Goolarabooloo Millibinyarri Indigenous Corporation (GMIC) and the now internationally renowned Lurujarri Heritage Trail (also known as the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail).
Lulu’s commitment to preserving Country from harm was illustrated in 1990 when the listed mining company, Terex Resources NL, sought approval to exploit mineral sands on the sacred domain of the Songline. Lulu and the other Majas (senior keepers of the Law) led a range of interests in opposition to it. Though it is rare for objections to mining exploration approvals to succeed in Western Australia, the Warden’s Court upheld the objections and the exploration license was refused, the Warden citing the significant Aboriginal cultural heritage values and environmental values of the area.Mining Warden’s court hearing in Broome 22–25 July 1991 in relation to Objections Nos 1-5/890, 18/890 and 3-4/901 to Applications by Terrex Resources NL for Exploration licenses EO4/645, 646 & 647: findings of 20 August 1991 by the warden, Dr JA Howard SM, available at the WA Department of Mines’ list of Warden’s Court decisions for 1991, Vol 8, Folio 8AA.
Lurujarri Heritage Trail