Laura 2017 Aboriginal Dance Festival.

June 30, Robert flew in to Cairns to be picked up by Gen who had driven 3,300 kms from Kiama to Cairns.

After successfully reversing over and squashing our cherished steel footstool, we were off for a four hour drive through savannah to Laura for the 2017 Indigenous Dance Festival.

En route we stopped in a small village where Robert spotted a place for coffee. The Lobo Loco or Crazy Wolf is run by an older Mexican-Swiss couple. Rudi the hubbie has lived all over the world, Alaska, Hong-Kong, Hamburg working in salvage, etc., and arrived in Cairns in the 70s. Then, the population was 18,000 and no one locked their doors. The couple have established a Mexican outpost in the middle of nowhere that is quite delightful. Rudi shows me a map from 1794 illustrating how most of North America belonged to Mexico. Now Trump is building a wall to keep Americans in, he says. We sipped his wife's Mexican coffee and left good friends.

Arriving at the dance festival in the middle of the bush, we found the ladies at the Reception table by the entrance gate, laid back and a tad chaotic. We rock up to the security check for alcohol where a friendly local advises we do like the locals and stash our booze outside the grounds in the bush. Thought for the day: who is going to have the bright idea, and clean up with a drone surveillance of booze hidey holes? How many kangaroos enjoying their wine? So, off we drive to find a trusty bush to hide our three bottles.

The ticket office sends us all over the barn, frustrating, until we just do what we want and all is cool. The dancing is impressive with vivid body painting, didgeridoo and singing, accompanying all kinds of jumps, wiggles, shimmies and graceful gestures.











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Laura Dance Festival, FNQ, Aboriginal Dance