Ion Idriess

Outlaws of the Leopolds Ion Idriess

North West Australia - in the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, formerly known as the King Leopold Ranges between 1879 and 2020, is the setting for the story of Aboriginal leader Jandamarra and his fight again white invasion of his country. As the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in 1952: Jandamarra, who was also known as Pigeon, had been a blacktracker of great prowess in the Kimberleys before he suddenly turned against the whites. The tribes in his territory were classed as outstanding aboriginal types, and the gang he raised after killing a mounted constable in 1894 was formidable not only in numbers but in cunning and resourcefulness... (his) brilliant strategy, his coldly calculated opportunism, his use of interlocking cave-systems in the Leopolds for getaways, his courage and, above all, his remarkable ability to control his fellow-natives, presented threats beyond the capacity of local patrols to handle. Idriess suggests that if Jandamarra had had just a little more time in the early stages of his campaign to organise his forces, he might have succeeded in driving white men out of the Kimberleys altogether.