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My name is Maitland Wilson, I’m a proud Bandjalang woman and I am the Senior Women’s Ranger working here on the Minyumai Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). I’m from Coraki inland from Evans Head in northern New South Wales and I’ve been working at Minyumai [south of Evans] for eight and a half years.
I love all of my Country but my favourite place is definitely Minyumai, I feel very connected to my Country out here. Way back in the day my people would use this area as a campground and that’s what Minyumai means in our language, ‘main camp’.
I started visiting here soon after the land was handed back to us in 1999 after a big campaign led by my pop Lawrence Wilson. I was born the year before, in 1998, so it feels like I’ve always been coming here with the mums and dads and aunties and uncles and cousins. All us young people from my generation have a strong connection, our pops and nanas had strong memories but for the next generation down it wasn’t so strong because when it was a working property they weren’t allowed on the land.
Ngugung Lawrence Wilson gave us that comfort of being connected to culture so it was embedded in us, like we didn’t have to reconnect because we’d always been brought out here as children. With all my cousins and peers, yeah, if it wasn’t for a place like Minyumai then I feel like it would just be, not lost, but it wouldn’t be something that brings us together so often. Anyway, my family has worked here before me. Aunties and uncles were Rangers back in the day when this was all bought up and started [in 2011].
That’s where my interest started in becoming a Ranger, so after I finished school I did a few TAFE courses in conservation and land management, weed control and fire fighting, stuff like that. Since I started my two younger brothers have joined up as Rangers. When we’re here we are totally focused on our jobs – we’ve got a rule, which is we leave all our family stuff at the gate!
We’ve also implemented projects and programs to get students involved out here, like a Junior Ranger program, to encourage the younger generation because the best time to get them out here is when they’re younger – kids are like sponges, they soak it up. They love holding animals and stuff like that, freaking out in the bush and like, ‘yeah that’s so cool!’ when they spot a koala in the tree or a goanna.
My totem is actually the goanna, Dirrawong in my language, that’s from my grandfather’s side. I have another one from my grandmother’s side, the ringtail possum, Gweeuhn in Bandjalang language. Both animals are found on Minyumai.
We do a few Bandjalang language classes here at Minyumai, my Auntie Simone Barker runs it. As a community we’re working out our dictionary and our words. Our aunties and uncles, who hold most of the knowledge and language, are teaching us. We’re still beginners – we do throw around the lingo here and at home as well.
It’s really important to us, especially when you’re out on Country, like there’s certain phrases and language names for flora and fauna. So it’s helping us a lot to reconnect with our culture, definitely out here working, yeah
For the past two years my main thing has been our Dingo (Ngugum) Management project, which started after we went to the First Nations Dingo Forum up in Cairns in 2023. A big team of us went up there and we were just blown away, there were over 100 Traditional Owners from 20 nations from all over Australia. It was just so good to see so many people… get together to stand in alliance to see what we could do to protect this species, this iconic native Australian species, especially for those from different Country where they’re totems to clans. It made me feel so good.
Once we got back to Minyumai it was like, oh man, the sky’s the limit. We knew we had to figure out a baseline for what we could do on our Country. So what we started to do was put up camera traps all over the IPA, just to see if we had any [dingo] population whatsoever. And from stories from our Elders before us they said that, you know, there were dingoes that roamed this Country. We took that and we were like, we need to get them back, we need to protect them.
As soon as we saw our first dingo photo on a camera trap, we just, oh, we just screamed of joy. Now we know we’ve got dingoes roaming all over the IPA, there’s roughly 10 to 15 locals and this is their territory, they can roam Country freely here. We’ve spotted a few pups on the cameras, they are so cute. It’s amazing!
It’s these apex predators that we need on Country, and they will eradicate the feral predators for us. The best outcome for us would be for National Parks to stop 1080 baiting, get the ball rolling up and down the coast and in the national parks near us. We want to see these dingoes roaming freely in a harmless environment.
I feel like [this work] gives me purpose as an Indigenous Ranger. I love it so much, and I know my Ngugung Lawrence Wilson would find solace knowing the Bandjalang people are doing this on their Country.
Banner Image: Minyumai Ranger Maitland Wilson. Photo: Annette Ruzicka.
We pay our respects to all the First Nations people around Australia and their unbroken commitment to keep Country strong on land and sea. We acknowledge Indigenous partners, Traditional Owners, Elders past, present and emerging and extend our appreciation of their support and guidance of our daily work.
