Yurlu | Country

Banjima Elder Maitland Parker calls his Yurlu (homeland) in the Pilbara region of Western Australia “poison country”; this haunting truth is etched into his body as he lives with terminal mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer resulting from asbestos exposure. Six decades prior, the Wittenoom mines left behind more than three million tonnes of waste rock laced with deadly asbestos fibres, turning 46,840 hectares of Banjima Country - an area three times the size of Geneva city - into a toxic exclusion zone. Today, Aboriginal communities in Western Australia have the world’s highest mortality rate from mesothelioma. Yurlu | Country follows Maitland as he confronts government inaction and corporate greed in the hope of allowing his people to reconnect with and heal their ancestral lands.
Directed by two-time UN Media Peace Award and six-time Walkley Award winner Yaara Bou Melhem, who worked closely with Parker and his family, this powerful documentary bears witness to Australia’s Chernobyl.