Noonkanbah native title hearing enters national archive, revisiting a ‘happy day’ on Country

A rare recording of a Federal Court native title determination held on Noonkanbah Station in the Kimberley has been added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, casting fresh light on a landmark 2007 moment when the court travelled to Country and the proceedings were broadcast live on local radio.

The Federal Court sat in a tent beside an old corrugated-iron woolshed at the cattle station on 27 April 2007, in what it described as the first time Federal Court proceedings were allowed to be broadcast in Australia. The recording, captured during an outside broadcast on ABC Kimberley, has now been preserved in the national audio collection.

“It’s a happy day” Dickey Cox, the lead claimant and Yungngora community chair said during the broadcast, shortly before Justice Robert French delivered a consent determination recognising native title rights and interests across 1,811 square kilometres of the lower Fitzroy River and surrounding plains.

Ernie Bridge, a former Kimberley politician who advocated for the Yungngora people, told the gathering that people might “ride different horses” but “we wear the same boots”. “We rode tall … [but] it was a long road,” he said, before later singing his song 200 Years Ago to the court.

The determination ended what the Western Australian government later described as a 27-year saga, formally recognising the Yungngora people’s rights to control access to their land and protect sites of significance. In a media statement issued on the day, then deputy premier Eric Ripper apologised for the state’s role in the 1979–80 Noonkanbah dispute, when the community resisted drilling on a sacred site and the confrontation drew international attention.

The National Native Title Tribunal’s case summary of Cox on behalf of the Yungngora People v Western Australia notes the determination was made by consent under section 87 of the Native Title Act, after the court considered expert anthropological evidence supporting the claim.

For Yungngora families and Kimberley communities, the archived broadcast is more than a historical curiosity. It is a recorded reminder that legal recognition has often come through long, community-led struggle – and that bringing courts onto Country can carry meaning that does not fit neatly inside a conventional courtroom.