Fanciful tale of bulletproof man inspired historian’s fascination

It’s been 34 years since Kimberley historian Howard Pedersen first heard the captivating tale of Jandamarra, the long-dead Bunuba warrior, but his fascination with the Aboriginal folk hero has not dimmed with time.

While hitchhiking through the Kimberley in 1977, Pedersen was dropped off in the frontier town of Fitzroy Crossing, where he met Banjo Woorunmurra, a “grand storyteller” who shared what he thought was a fanciful tale.

In whispers, Woorunmurra recounted the story of a magical man who evaded capture by police and pastoralists in the late 1800s as he fought for years to protect his country from invasion.

“The white police came to believe that he was extraordinary and magical, because he couldn’t be killed,” Pedersen said.

“They shot him and he was wounded so many times but he kept on re-emerging.”

Fascinated by the encounter, Pedersen was inspired to study history at Murdoch University, where he found a book called Outlaws of the Leopolds, a novelisation of the tale he heard.

“I was so taken by this story and it was so similar to what I’d heard that I went to the newspaper accounts and then to police records and found that it was true,” he said.

He wrote the enduringly popular Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance published in 1995, after Woorunmurra, the Bunuba storyteller, asked him to.

Pedersen said his upcoming free presentation, to be held at the Broome Library on November 16 at 6.30pm, would explore some of the key writings and events that influenced the writing of Jandamarra.

These include theories of colonialism, subversion and social bandits such as Ned Kelly.

The talk will also touch on political actions such as Noonkanbah and the subsequent battle for land rights involving his friends, Peter Yu, Rob Riley and June Oscar.

“An important part of the presentation is how the Bunuba oral account changed during my collaboration with the community,” he said. “When I first heard the story, many Bunuba people, but not Banjo, referred to Jandamarra as “Pigeon”, an outlaw and troublemaker.

“After our collaborative reconstruction of the story, fusing archival information with Bunuba oral history and imagination, he became universally known as Jandamarra, a freedom fighter who fought in defence of his people.”