Having a Blast at Barunga Festival 2022

We treated ourselves to a 3-day festival event in Barunga, an indigenous community close to Katherine in the Northern Territory.

Amongst the first to roll up at the campgrounds on Friday, we pegged our spot a short walk from the display grounds for the Festival which included dance, music and sports plus crafts, cooking and yarning with the locals. There were popup food stalls for paella! and smoothies, as well as an art tent selling massively expensive, decorative Indigenous arts way beyond our meagre budget.

In the late afternoon we watched videos on the SkinnyFish stage on a giant TV screen, including a great Kriol rendering territory Style of Waltjim Bat Matilda (Waltzing Matilda) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgLtzD6JxcA

Teenagers and the young at heart got to boogie with light sabres at the evening disco.

High above us hung a huge, beaming Sturgeon moon lighting up a motley pack of 4- and 3-legged canines racing around and rolling happily on the ground. On the edge of the grounds, flying fox mobs screeched and erupted skywards to fly to nightime feeding trees.

First thing on Saturday, we went to the SkinnyFish stage again to see the local schoolchildren led by an enthusiastic teacher performing songs to guitar about their local places and the wildlife they encounter at the creek.

In the early afternoon was the official welcome to Country followed by the usual pollies or politicians spouting about themselves and their policies...turgid, boring, burbling stuff hard to listen to.

More heroic by far than all those useless politicians, the man of the moment in my estimation was the hero driver valiantly wielding the suction hose of the Porta loo emptying truck. He completed tireless laps of the campsite and its dunnies until his truck broke down the next day and was towed away, much to the relief of Gen who kept complaining what a crappy background to her pictures the dunny truck was.

Late afternoon, a troupe of dancers who had flown in from Groote Eylandt performed Bungul dancing on a sandy circle. Painted torsos and faces were incongruously offset by rakish baseball caps. The audience was called on to join the dancers so all had fun and generated clouds of dust.

In the evening, we went back to the stage to see local Indigenous groups. Lo and behold, the Groote Eylandt dancers reappeared in full rock and roll sartorial splendour as the Eylandt Band to blast us all as we danced in a crowd.

A huge moon shone down again as a bright, glowing disc above the hammering music and pulsating stagelights: what a blast!

Sunday saw most of the visitors leave, but we stayed for a spear throwing contest where the aim was to hit a slightly beaten up looking toy kangaroo target from 30 metres away. Guess what, the Groote Eylandt warriors were up for this too! One of their spearmen hit a glancing blow to one of the kangaroo's paws and was declared a winner.

Much enjoyment came from simply sitting in the shade and people-watching, seeing who came by, young, old, chic, not so chic, kids, teenagers, Aunties, elders, and more.

Sadly, on Monday morning we started feeling really sick: somewhere during the festival we had picked up the unwanted gift of a covid infection which knocked us out for the next 10 days and sent Gen to hospital for one day.

===============================================================

Barunga Festival, Katherine, Northern Territory, Aboriginal