The Yambah mob decide to move out of town and live on the stock route and stock reserve areas (McGrath Dam) near Yambah Station, north of Alice Springs.
"This is my father's land. That is why I am stopping here. With white man's land, when the station owner dies, his son takes over. It's just the same. This is my father's land and I'm taking over. All we want is our place". Silas Turner (July 1984).
In June 1989 five Arrernte families set up a protest camp alongside the Stuart Highway forty five kilometres north of Alice Springs. The families, who were known as the Yambah mob, had been fighting for fourteen years for title to their traditional land, and they resolved to stay put until they got justice.
An administrative procedure based on 'excision guidelines' was set up by the NT Government in 1985. The guidelines were more concerned with defining who was ineligible for an excision than acquiring living areas. They explicitly rejected traditional affiliation as a basis for an excision application.
"We weren't eligible through the terms of the guidelines, how could we be when they set out rules that they knew most Aboriginal people couldn't abide by? It was ridiculous. We are the families who have traditional association with this land. The pastoral leases sits upon our land. My father, my grandfathers and many members of the other families have worked here on this station. They have put up the fence lines and worked their guts out for something they can't get back now. It is totally unfair". Margie Lynch (spokesperson for Mpweringe Arnapipe Council).
The CLC began negotiations on behalf of the Lynch, McMillan, Rice and Turner families in 1975 and in the early 1980's lodged land claims on nearby stock routes and reserves.
The families formed the Mpweringe Arnapipe Council in 1984 and moved out of Alice Springs to set up camps on a stock route and reserves near Yambah Station and demonstrate their commitment to their traditional country. Because they had no 'legal' land title, government departments refused to provide even the most basic services, ande even drinking water had to be carted by truck from Alice Springs and stored in recycled forty-four gallon drums.
They resisted intimidation and gunshots, but after five years of patience they decided it was time to increase the pressure with a visible protest camp. Over forty people moved into the roadside camp, living in canvas tents and donated tin sheds with an old minibus serving as a classroom for the children.
The story of the Yambah mob and their fight for living areas and excisions helped to focus national attention on 'the people that land rights forgot' - the people who were forced off their country by the pastoral industry.
The Yambah protest camp built political pressure for the Memorandum of Agreement between the Federal and Territory Governments, a part of which was to consider land for Aboriginal people on the stock route and reserve areas.
"Before Kidman got that country, we had that land. The land was there all the time. They put their mark around the boundary - that's white fella way. When they put that line they cut our country in half. But we had our map all the time since the earth was put up. We're entitled to our land. We're entitled to that land, because its my father's and grandfather's land, it belongs to us. Don Lynch (November 1989).