Located 5km southeast of Bandilngan, along the Fairfield-Leopold Downs Road, Lillimooloora Station is an important place within the story of Bunuba. It was here in 1884 that the first pastoral station was established on Bunuba Country. The Station was named Lillimooloora as a misinterpretation of a nearby spring, Limalurru. The King Sound Pastoral Company ran sheep here until the unprecedented floods of 1894 destroyed fences and washed away thousands of sheep. Devastated, the managers walked away from the homestead and their dreams of a pastoral empire.
The homestead was soon re-established as the local Police Camp, as the previous location at Lennard River had been obliterated in those same floods. The invasion of the pastoralists, their defilement of Country and their desecration of Bunuba law had already incited warring and bloodshed between our ancestors and the malngarri (Europeans). But with the police taking up residence in the heart of Bunuba Country, the existing tensions were exacerbated.
The inevitable storm broke late in 1894. At that time a young Bunuba man by the name of Jandamarra was working as a police tracker. He was assigned to Constable Bill Richardson, and both were based at Lillimooloora. Richardson had taken seventeen Bunuba men as prisoners and held them shackled at the Police Camp for several days. Many of these men were family to Jandamarra, and his obligations to kin and Country far outweighed his loyalty to the transgressing malngarri. Late on the night of October 31st, Jandamarra freed his relatives and shot Richardson dead. This heralded a new chapter in the story of the Bunuba Resistance and transformed Jandamarra into the warrior whose name we speak proudly today.
The actions of Jandamarra and our ancestors instigated a three-year war between our people and the malngarri. Time and time again, the police camp at Lillimooloora became a central point in the fighting as our forebears sought desperately to stave off the wave of destruction that was colonising our people and Country. Whilst we paid for this dearly and inevitably bore witness to the invasion of land, the story of Jandamarra speaks to our strength and resilience as a people.
This is the story of Lillimooloora – the first site of malngarri incursion on our land. When you visit the ruins today, you are not merely seeing the remnants of an old homestead. It is a marker to a pivotal stage in our collective story. Not only do these ruins talk of death and destruction, their lasting presence evokes the strength and determination that also underwrote this period.