A long time ago, there was a limestone hill wedged between the Derbal Yaragan – a slow, serpentine river – and the vast ocean. Its western face was covered with coastal heath while a tuart forest, watered from a small seep, grew in the protected hollow at its base. The Whadjuk people of Noongar Country referred to the limestone hill and coastline as Booyeembara, meaning “of limestone hills.” The limestone hill was one of seven hills known as the Seven Sisters of Walyalup (“place of the eagle”), after an important Whadjuk dreaming story.1
Booyeembara Park is located on the site of that ancient limestone hill in Fremantle, Western Australia. The park has been shaped by the tensions between different value systems connected to Indigenous culture, colonization, laws and governance, landscape architecture and community. A hierarchy of value currencies, ranging from the Whadjuk people living in relative harmony with the landscape
