Page 11 - Port Douglas Magazine 47

etting the chance to sit down with an Indigenous elder is COMING HOME TO COUNTRY
something special. But sitting down with the man behind Roy’s early life was shaped by a painful chapter in Australia’s history.
one of the most meaningful cultural experiences in Far North Although born in the Kuku Yalanji community near Mossman Gorge,
GQueensland ‑ if not Australia ‑ is something else entirely. he was taken away as part of the Stolen Generations.
I had come to Mossman Gorge to meet Kuku Yalanji Elder Roy Gibson, as Roy and his three brothers were sent to Palm Island, where many
the Ngadiku (Nar‑di‑gul) Dreamtime Walk celebrates 40 years this year. Indigenous people from across northern Queensland had been
What began with Roy’s vision has since introduced visitors from around the relocated. Years later, when Roy was 16, police arrived with unexpected
world to the stories and culture of the region’s traditional owners. news. “They said, ‘You’re going back home.’ We looked at each other and

Just a 20‑minute drive north of Port Douglas, the Gorge sits on the edge said, what do you mean home? We didn’t know where home was.”
of the UNESCO World Heritage‑listed ancient Daintree Rainforest. That home was Mossman. When Roy finally returned, his family and

Surrounded by towering canopy, smooth granite boulders and the crystal community welcomed him back, reconnecting him with language,
clear green waters of the Mossman River, it feels culture and Country. “I learned from my uncles
far removed from the modern world. and cousins ‑ fishing, hunting, walking in the

For tens of thousands of years this land has been bush and listening to stories. I was lucky,” he says.
home to the Kuku Yalanji people, whose deep “I’d see all these people By the 1980s, Mossman Gorge was already
connection to the rainforest, rivers and stories of driving past and think, attracting visitors drawn to its rainforest and
Country continues today. As a young man, Roy crystal‑clear river. But for the local indigenous
watched a steady stream of visitors making their there’s something here... community, opportunities were few.
way to Mossman Gorge and began imagining a

way to share the culture and knowledge of his We could share our culture. Roy left school early and found work cutting
people with those coming to experience the We could do something for sugar cane. “But I was always thinking about how
rainforest. things could be better,” he says.

That vision would eventually grow into the our people.” Watching the steady stream of cars heading to the
Gorge each day, he began to see an opportunity.
THE DREAM THAT BECAME Ngadiku Dreamtime Walk, now operated “I’d see all these people driving past and think,
through the Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre.
there’s something here,” he says. “We could share
Ngadiku means “stories and legends from a
THE DREAMTIME WALK long time ago” in the Kuku Yalanji language, and the walk invites visitors our culture. We could do something for our people.” When he mentioned
the idea to the farmer he worked for, the response was blunt. “He said,
to discover how the world’s oldest living culture has thrived within the
‘You keep dreaming.’ And I told him I would.”
135‑million‑year‑old Daintree Rainforest.
In 2026, the centre marks two remarkable milestones: 40 years of the walk
A 40 Year Legacy at Mossman Gorge and the incredible achievement of welcoming half a million visitors on the A DREAM BORN IN THE RAINFOREST
Dreamtime Walk. In Roy’s case, that dream came to him quite literally. One night he
WORDS by Jamie Jansen When I sat down with Roy to talk about how it all began, it quickly became dreamed about a large rock high on the mountain above the Gorge, what
clear that his own story is just as powerful as the journey he created, a story locals call Shepherd Rock.
that, quite literally, began with a dream.
PORT DOUGLAS MAGAZINE 11