The Big Turtle

Plantation Park is a genuinely significant place. It holds Gubulla Munda – the sixty-metre carpet snake commissioned by the Gudjuda Reference Group in 2004, depicting the totem and protective spirit of the Birri Gubba people – at a site that also carries plaques and a memorial stone marking Birri Gubba ancestors re-interred there.

That context is why this entry is careful. The Juru Walk carries the name of the Juru people, and a turtle on a cultural walk in a park of this significance is not a decorative object. What it represents is a matter for the Traditional Owners, and this record does not attempt to describe it.

What can be stated is the object: a giant turtle sculpture along the shaded Juru Walk section of the park, in Ayr in the Burdekin.

Australia's other significant turtle sculptures – Colin at Lyons in Darwin, made with local Indigenous artists in 2004, and the carved timber one at Forster – sit in comparable territory, and the Lyons record was held for cultural review before being cleared against City of Darwin's own published framing.

This one warrants the same treatment before publication.