A Western Australian man has been found guilty of breaching the state’s Aboriginal Heritage Act for building a bridge on his own property without seeking approval.
Tony Maddox, 72, could have been jailed for nine months and fined $20,000 after he disrupted the ‘Rainbow Serpent’ that was associated with the creek on his property in Toodyay, 85km northwest of Perth, after he built a concrete bridge over it.
Instead, when Mr Maddox appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Monday, he was fined $2,000, given a spent conviction and ordered to pay $5,000 in costs.
Though the outcome was not as severe as it could have been, Mr Maddox told the ABC he was ‘shattered’ and found the decision ‘quite unbelievable’.
The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage said the bridge disturbed Waugul – a rainbow serpent central to the mythology of the Noongar people – after Mr Maddox removed a large amount of silt from the creek.
The act he was charged under prohibits the excavation, destruction, concealment or alteration of Aboriginal heritage sites.
Mr Maddox, who took a considerable amount of time off his work as a real estate agent to fight the charge, said he didn’t know heritage laws applied to the creek and claimed no Indigenous elders had aired their concerns with him.
But Magistrate Andrew Matthews did not accept this defence, saying while the works did not cause significant damage, the site had been changed.
Tony Maddox (pictured) could have been jailed for nine months and fined $20,000 after he disrupted a ‘Rainbow Serpent’ with the construction of a concrete bridge
Prosecutor Lorraine Allen said the state hoped the case would ‘deter people from destroying or altering Aboriginal heritage’.
Maddox said the legal battle ‘knocked the hell out of me as a human being’.
‘I literally haven’t worked all year, I’ve been fighting this for a year. This just destroys your heart. Destroys your head, destroys your soul,’ he told Sky News last year.
‘And what is the outcome? The outcome is going to be an awful lot of money piling up. For what … there is nothing in the Act that tells them they have the power to ask me to remove the crossing.’
The creek crossing is the only point of entry to his property, with the work carried out to prevent erosion caused by heavy rain and flooding.
Mr Maddox said he had discussed the concrete bridge with local Aboriginal elders since it was built, and they had made no complaints.
‘It’s quite unbelievable,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand the heavy-handedness of the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.
The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage said the bridge (pictured) disrupted Waugul – a rainbow serpent central to the mythology of the Noongar people
‘Why wouldn’t they instead just say, “You’ve broken our Act, we’re aware you didn’t know anything about it, let’s educate you and tell you about it.”‘
‘I’ve had more education from our local elders than I have from the department.’
Mr Maddox said the case had taken a significant mental and financial toll on him, including ‘a huge amount of expenditure on my part to get to this stage with a lawyer and a barrister working for me’.
He bought the 14-acre property in 2013 and installed a culvert crossing over the creek the following year, then built a home there in 2019.
After the original crossing was damaged by flooding in 2020, he had a builder concrete it over and remove debris.
Mr Maddox told the court the process had created a ‘wildlife sanctuary’ home for 120 ducks because of the water he pumped in.
