Weekend festival

Bev welcoming everyone with her clapping sticks.
(click on the photos to enlarge them)

We had a wonderful weekend. I hope you did too. Saturday morning we were up and dressed early to go to our local annual aboriginal gathering - the Bunya Dreaming Festival, a celebration of the local Gubbi Gubbi people and aboriginal culture. It's held when the Bunya pines produce their delicious nuts and for thousands of years, the local aboriginal people gathered at this place to eat and share the nuts. In the old times, the coastal clans were invited up to the mountains, they brought fish with them and when they met, they feasted, had games and challenges, dancing and corroboree.

Message stick invitations went out to many people and about 700 attended as family groups. The festival wasn't advertised and only those invited could come along. I was invited as part of my Centre's family, and as part of this family, we helped cook and serve the food and drinks. My wonderful friend Bev, the organiser of the festival and elder of the Gubbi Gubbi, spoke to me about six months ago about us helping and we jumped at the chance to be part of this event.

Bev wanted the food to be simple and easy to walk around with. She supplied us with an amount of money and asked for something like sausages on bread, fruit, and drinks. On the invitation she asked people bring a plate of food to share. What we ended up with was the sausages on bread, onions, sauce, barbecued bunya nuts with wattleseed and wild tomato dressing, oranges, watermelon, rockmelons (cantaloupe), grapes, bananas, peaches, soup, scones and jam, tea, coffee, spring water and fruit juice, plus the shared food people brought along. There was also a bunya cooking competition and when that was judged, the pies, bread and cakes, were sliced up and shared as well. With over 700 people there, there was not one drop of alcohol, which I thought was wonderful and amazing. I'm no wowzer but it is commonplace in Australia now for alcohol to be a part of almost every social gathering so when no one turned up with beer or wine, well, I was shocked.

Aboriginal artifacts on the dance area.

Oh, and part of the culture is that everything is shared, so Bev asked me to ask the volunteers who helped cook and serve, to give whatever people asked for. No one paid for anything and no one was to be refused anything. I had visions of giving out 20 sausage sandwiches but that didn't happen, we just had a few kids coming to ask for extras for the old aunties and the old people who had sent them to collect food for them. There is a very strong tradition of respect for the elders and it shone through on that day. It was a privilege to see it in action.

Bev's clapping sticks.

The main part of the day was opened up by Bev welcoming us all to her ancestral lands. She explaining what happened at the Bunya gatherings in the past, as told to her by her mother from the stories passed down over thousands of years from mother to child. Then she invited aboriginees from other places throughout Australia to come and introduce themselves to us. While she was talking, she used clapping sticks, and a man next to her played the didjeridu. I wish I could have listened more intently but I was serving food and couldn't hear everything she said.

A box of bunya nuts.

During the rest of the time we were there we saw some artifacts poked into the sand in the dance area, and there were challenges and games. After we left the Gubbi Gubbi dancers performed and there was a corroboree and fire ceremony at sunset, where a canoe brought fire from one side of the water to the other. But we were long gone by then.

The view from the car on the trip home. These are the Glasshouse Mountains.

Hanno and I went home after lunch, totally exhausted. When we got home, we went to sleep on the couch. But it was a fine day, one of the best I've spent in my local area, and we were thankful that we'd been a part of it.

This is where the fire ceremony took place.

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