For an ancient civilisation

A couple of years ago I was interpreting regularly in the Pilbara for Japanese trainers and commissioning engineers at a power station. We stayed in mining camps - serried dongas, endless food, hiviz, Hilux and rustdust. Workers do two weeks on, then fly home to Perth or the East for two weeks off (or some variation thereof).

There were fears that the Fly-In-Fly-Out economy would transfer all the economic benefits to urbanites, bypassing and denying the local indigenous people the opportunities that would otherwise come with major investments and development.

But it is not necessarily so. As well as efforts by mining companies to train and recruit aboriginals, and income from heritage consulting, many of them are traditional owners of the land being mined and receive substantial royalty payments.

To successfully lodge a land claim though you do have to demonstrate a “continuous relationship” with the land, but once those royalties kick in who would want to keep living up there? So I heard that the representatives of the local people who are the traditional owners of the mining lease are also FIFO, 2 x 2 swings, and they stay in the same camps as everyone else. Now that’s assimilation.