Perth Voice Interactive

NERVOUS kangaroos and Yagan’s genitals are proving to be sticking points for staging 5km runs on Heirisson Island.

Organisers of Parkrun stage a weekly event around Claisebrook Cove and are keen to start another at Heirisson Island, an area known as Matagarup to local Nyoongars.

The Whadjuk working party, which provides advice on sites of Aboriginal significance, fully supports the runs but has reservations about people running past the statue of the naked warrior.

Aboriginal people have long-complained that Yagan’s nakedness is culturally inappropriate but their calls for the statue’s privates to be covered have fallen on deaf ears.

“The Whadjuk [working party] did express concerns about the state of Yagan and the fact that the statue depicts Yagan naked, a fact which they find culturally unacceptable,” a council report into the run bid said.

“The WP expressed a desire to address this problem at least during Parkrun race times so that the ‘impact’ that it may have on sensitivities can be reduced.”

In 2005 Nyoongar elder Richard Wilkes called for Yagan to be given a covering as it would be more historically accurate and in 2002 Joe Walley, a member of the Bibbulmum Aboriginal Corporation, stated, “the wrong impressions are given to schoolchildren both black and white and the wider community… the South West Nyoongar had cloaks called a boorka, made from kangaroo skins and also possum skins”.

The PCC is considering throwing in $5000 to get the free 5km event off the ground, but the marketing committee is lukewarm about Heirisson Island as a location.

Cr James Limnios wants to see an alternative route along the riverside, fearing runners may disturb the island’s mob of western greys.

“Why on Earth would we have to go through and stress those kangaroos there?” he asked, suggesting an alternative route along the river down to the belltower. I don’t feel comfortable interrupting these animals on a weekly basis.”

PCC services director Garry Dunne says there are four or five kangaroos in that part and “a lot of people who go looking for them can’t find them”.

Councillors asked staff to get back to Parkrun and discuss an alternative routes.

by DAVID BELL