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Muckaty Station, also known as Warlmanpa, is a Aboriginal freehold landholding in Australia's Northern Territory, north of Tennant Creek, and approximately south of Darwin. Originally under traditional Indigenous Australian ownership, the area became a pastoral lease in the late 19th century and for many years operated as a cattle station. It is traversed by the Stuart Highway, built in the 1940s along the route of the service track for the Australian Overland Telegraph Line. It is also crossed by a natural gas pipeline built in the mid-1980s, and the Adelaide–Darwin railway, completed in early 2004. Muckaty Station was returned to its Indigenous custodians in 1999. The area comprises semi-arid stony ridges, claypans and a stony plateau, and experiences a sub-tropical climate, with a wet season between January and March. The vegetation is mostly scrubland, including spinifex grasslands. The fauna is generally typical of Australian desert environments, and includes the red kangaroo, the eastern wallaroo, the northern nail-tail wallaby, and the spinifex hopping mouse. A site within Muckaty is being considered for Australia's low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste storage and disposal facility. Indigenous custodians of Muckaty Station are divided over the proposal, which has also met resistance from environmental organisations and the Northern Territory government. The plan is subject to a Federal Court challenge due to be heard in 2014. ==History== Indigenous Australians have lived in parts of the Northern Territory for around 40,000 years. Pre-European settlement numbers are not known with any precision, although the Indigenous population of the Northern Territory has been estimated at "well over 10,000".〔Langfield 2001, p. 4.〕 The area now known as Muckaty Station (often referred to as just "Muckaty", though the origin of this name and near variants such as "Mucketty" is unknown) was – and is – the responsibility of seven clans of traditional Indigenous owners: Milwayi, Ngapa, Ngarrka, Wirntiku, Kurrakurraja, Walanypirri and Yapayapa.〔Gray 1997, pp. 17–37.〕 The country is known by the Indigenous name Warlmanpa, which is also the name of a local language.〔Gray 1997; Nash 1992, pp. 2–3.〕 Although there had been several unsuccessful attempts by British or colonial authorities to settle in the Northern Territory, there was no permanent European presence until surveyor George Goyder in 1869 established what is now known as Darwin.〔Carment 1996, pp. 2–4.〕 The timing was auspicious: in October 1870 the South Australian government decided to construct an overland telegraph line, from Port Augusta on the continent's south coast, to the new settlement just established in the country's tropical north.〔Carment 1996, p. 4.〕 The line traversed what is now Muckaty Station, with repeater stations built at Powell's Creek to the north and Tennant's Creek to the south.〔Shepherd 1996, p. 43.〕 At the same time as the telegraph line was completed in August 1872,〔Carment 1996, p. 5.〕 a cattle industry was beginning to develop in central and northern Australia. The first pastoral lease in the Northern Territory was granted in 1872, and by 1911 there were at least 250 such leases covering over of the jurisdiction.〔Ling 2009, p. 29.〕 The Muckaty pastoral lease was created in the late 19th century.〔Nash 1992.〕 Currently the property is surrounded by other leases including Powell Creek to the north, Helen Springs Station to the east with Philip Creek and Banka Banka Stations to the south. In the 1930s, the Australian government was sufficiently concerned about the condition and lack of development of these leases that it held two inquiries between 1932 and 1938. Historian Ted Ling's accounts of those inquiries, however, make no mention of Muckaty, which was not singled out for comment by either investigation.〔Ling 2009; Ling 2010.〕 Throughout the history of Australia's pastoral industry, Indigenous Australians were a major part of the workforce. In 1928 for example, 80 per cent of Indigenous people with jobs were employed on the stations, including Muckaty, with many living on and travelling across the pastoral leases.〔Gray 1997, p. 57.〕〔McLaren and Cooper 2001, pp. 162–178.〕〔 The local language, Warlmanpa, was recognised in some publications from the 1930s onward, while anthropologists and administrators made some records of language and population in the region of Muckaty Station. Only one record from the period lists both Muckaty Station as a location and Warlmanpa as a language. A record of Aboriginal wards of the state, it showed only three Indigenous adults living on Muckaty, compared to almost fifty on Banka Banka Station, to the east.〔Nash 1992, pp. 5–7.〕 This reflects the fact that, by 1940, "Warlmanpa country had been depopulated".〔Nash 1992, p. 5.〕 By the 1940s the lessee at Muckaty was Fred Ulyatt.〔Nash 1992, p. 6.〕 The 1940s also marked a significant change in the region's road infrastructure. A dirt track had been formed to service the telegraph line in the late nineteenth century. This became the Stuart Highway, crossing the eastern part of Muckaty, and it was upgraded to an all-weather road in late 1940,〔McLaren and Cooper 2001, p. 136.〕 before being bitumenised in 1944. Sources do not say who leased the property between the 1940s and 1982, at which point the lease was held by James and Miriam Hagan. In 1988 it was transferred to Hapford Pty Limited and Kerfield Pty Limited.〔Gray 1997, pp. 3–4.〕 Between 1985 and 1987 a natural gas pipeline was built across the station, carrying gas from Palm Valley in the Amadeus Basin to Channel Island near Darwin.〔Gray 1997, pp. 5–8.〕 In 1991, the cattle station was taken over by the Muckaty Aboriginal Corporation. The Corporation focused on rehabilitating the land, which had been degraded by excessive numbers of cattle, and by late 1993 Muckaty had been destocked of cattle for several seasons.〔Gray 1997, pp. 1, 14.〕 On 20 December 1991, the Northern Land Council lodged a claim over Muckaty on behalf of traditional owners under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. The claim was made by members of the seven groups that each has responsibility for different sites and dreamings in the area.〔Gray 1997, p. 17.〕 In 1997, the Aboriginal Land Commissioner recommended that Muckaty Station be handed back to the traditional owners,〔Gray 1997, p. 70.〕 and in February 1999, title to the land was returned. At the time there were about 400 formal traditional owners, among 1,000 people with traditional attachments to the land; some lived on the station, but others were elsewhere in the region, including in the nearby towns of Tennant Creek and Elliott.〔 As Aboriginal Freehold land it is inalienable communal title, and cannot be bought or sold.〔Parsons Brinckerhoff 2009b, p. 43.〕 The pastoral lease holder and manager of the station since 1997 has been Ray Aylett. The Adelaide–Darwin railway, which passes through the western part of Muckaty Station, was completed in early 2004. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Muckaty Station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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