Coalcliff couple's doco up for top journalism award

Members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are respectfully advised that this article contains images and names of deceased people.

A Coalcliff couple who donned hazmat suits to venture into Australia’s largest contaminated site and shine a light on the campaign to clean up Banjima Country are finalists for a Walkley Documentary Award this Thursday. 

Yurlu | Country is set in the former asbestos mining town of Wittenoom, Western Australia. In the film, director Yaara Bou Melhem and cinematographer Tom Bannigan follow the final year of Banjima Elder Maitland Parker and his fight to save his people and their ancestral lands, or ‘Yurlu’.

“He was a very outspoken and powerful character who wanted to set a few historical wrongs right, talk about the history and try to get people to clean up his country,” Tom says.

The Banjima Elder called his homelands “Poison Country”. It’s a truth filmmakers say was etched into his own body – Maitland had mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer caused by asbestos exposure. 

“I think he was a very brave person, because he let us into his life and he let us film him at some very vulnerable moments,” Tom says.

“He used to go to Wittenoom to do the mail run and things like that… to go shopping. He never worked in the mine, but he was exposed to all these asbestos tailings.”

“He was a very natural storyteller, and he felt that he wanted to tell this story about his people, the Banjima people.”  

Yurlu | Country focuses on the blue asbestos mining that has poisoned Banjima Country and its people for 80 years. Sixty years after the mine’s closure, there are still three million tons of asbestos tailings left on the ground. The result is undeniable – Aboriginal people in the Pilbara have the highest death rates of mesothelioma in the world, and Banjima people like Maitland are still being affected.

“In terms of the death toll from man-made disasters like Chernobyl, I think Wittenoom is number five on the list," Tom says. "Over 2,000 people have died so far from asbestos-related diseases.

"The government just abandoned Wittenoom, they just tried to make it disappear rather than clean it up.

“We hope that it gets cleaned up and people stop dying and people can go back and use that country because it's a beautiful place, and it's got a spiritual importance to everybody.”

Partners in life and work, Yaara and Tom are married with young children and have also collaborated on a 2021 feature documentary, Unseen Skies. Originally, they began making a film about old mines in Australia, taking an interest in the estimated 60,000 abandoned sites across the country, including the old coal mine behind Coalcliff. 

“But instead we went to Wittenoom," Tom says. "We decided to make a film to highlight the fact that there's been very little remediation of these places.”

The crew was small, often limited to Tom and Yarra, and operating in the contaminated area meant ‌they had to wear full PPE. While filming, the pair navigated challenging temperatures, long-distance travel and the unpredictable nature of Maitland’s illness.

“It was hard to plan things sometimes because it involved someone who was unwell. Things would change really often,” Tom says.

“For some of the filming, we're dressed head to toe in something like a hazmat suit, to stop you getting exposure. We had to wear a mask, and we had to decontaminate every time we went into the contamination zone. And it's probably about 50°C. So, we're trying to film in very uncomfortable circumstances. We had to take a lot of precautions.

“The hardest thing about actually filming was that we had a two-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes they’d come on shoots too. So that was definitely a family affair.”

The film has toured festivals in Australia, Spain, Aotearoa and the US, with sold-out screenings in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth ahead of its theatrical release on November 13. 

Tom and Yarra are glad the story is being recognised – it has won the Edge of Impact award at Doc Edge Festival, Best International Documentary Feature at Buffalo International Film Festival and Best Music in a Documentary at APRA AMCOS. This Thursday, it is one of three finalists up for the Walkley Documentary Award at the 70th annual celebration of journalism excellence. Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil fame called Yurlu | Country, “one of the most compelling stories in Australia at the moment”.

Above all, the team hopes the film continues to drive action.

“It's talking about some issues that we should have talked about before, but it's not until you get a very strong person with a clear voice that they can make these points and get people interested,” Tom says.

“Maitland always said that because the Pilbara is so remote, people weren't really interested in it. He says it himself, that historically people didn't really care about that part of the world, and they thought it was just a place to mine, and they didn't really see the value in it.” 

Banjima people are running a #CleanUpWittenoom campaign, inviting all to show their support for the Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation’s plea for the remediation of asbestos tailing dumps at Wittenoom. Allies can sign their names online at cleanupwittenoom.com, pledge their support, and #WalkWithBanjima.

“Going to a screening and talking about it – getting the dialogue happening is really important too.” 

Watch Yurlu | Country at a movie theatre near you or sign up to host a screening via yurlucountry.com/take-action