Yalata Indigenous Community Embraces Tourism with New Public Art

Visitation to the remote Indigenous community of Yalata on the far-west coast of South Australia has been limited since it was established in 1952.

The community is an Indigenous Protected Area owned and managed by the Yalata Anangu Aboriginal Corporation.

"We still live in a cultured life, a traditional lifestyle," said Uncle Fabian Peel, who has lived in Yalata since he was 13 years old.

The community consists largely of Anangu traditional owners who were forcibly relocated from their ancestral homelands in the lead-up to British nuclear bomb testing in Maralinga in the 1950s.

Increasingly, the coastline around Yalata was being used by people, including international tourists, trying to fish off the Great Australian Bight coastline, Uncle Peel said

"We hid our fishing spot away from the public for years. But people keep coming here," he said.

Anglers fishing near Yalata have been known to catch monster mulloway, gummy shark, Australian salmon, and snapper.

While visitation to Yalata is still restricted to the public – and alcohol strictly prohibited – the community has decided to promote its camping and fishing spots through two new public artworks: a Yalata Roadhouse sign and the bronze Mighty Mulloway.

The two-metre, 200-kilogram bronze mulloway sculpture was purchased by Yalata Anangu Community and unveiled this month at the Yalata Roadhouse, which is also owned and managed by the community.

"We came up with the idea of putting a statue of the Mulloway … and opened up fishing to the public," said Uncle Peel.

He hoped the Mighty Mulloway, also known as the "silver ghost" fish, would entice people to apply to visit Yalata and learn about the diversity of the lands and the people who live there.

He said visitation to Yalata would result in long-term, stable employment in retail and rangers to protect the campgrounds.

"The community is closed, but not 100 per cent closed," explained David White, Yalata Anangu Community chief executive.

"We have extensive camping and fishing along the coast that's available for visitors with permits."

While the plunge into tourism has been in the pipeline for almost a decade, Mr White said the sculpture was Yalata's "first real step".

"Kimba has the Big Galah, Nullarbor Roadhouse has the Big Whale, and now we've got our bronzed mulloway, the Mighty Mulloway."

Reckoning with history

Yalata's history centres on the displacement of Aboriginal people from their ancestral homelands due to British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s.

"They're displaced people," Mr White said.

"But they're starting to really put their roots into the ground now."

Uncle Peel said Yalata had changed a lot in recent years.

"Twenty years ago we didn't have any houses here. Some of us still lived out in the bush in humpies," he said.

Mr White said it had been a massive move for the community, but people were finally making Yalata their home.

A spokesperson for the South Australian Tourism Commission said statues and public art were great ways to make travellers pull over and spend time and money in towns "that they might otherwise drive straight past".

Uncle Peel hoped Yalata's step into tourism would create more opportunities for its young people while helping the town retain its agency.

"It's the young ones that are going to run the community soon and looking after us," he said.

"We want to grow. But we want to control that."