A Journey Without End

‘Going Back To The Nation’

In mid October 1995 I was invited to attend the ‘Strength Through Unity Reconciliation Festival’ in Brewarrina - a ten thousand year old gathering place on the bend of N.S.W.’s Barwon river.

Brewarrina Reconciliation Festival

George Burarrwanga of the Warumpi Band and friend

You could feel the oppression of Brewarrina and the peoples living there. An unrelentless devastation.

The Brewarrina Dancers

Ruby Hunter with her husband Archie Roach

Social changes are desperately needed in Australia and the Indigenous peoples deserve more freedom. To this day I can still recall the emotions I experienced being in this place..a place where your every move is observed and challenged.

Maleny Folk Festival NYE 1994-95

Heading north towards a closing year. The takeaway boulevards, the shallow oppression of urban importance engulfed by the oncoming days. Till the company in the car swung back on itself. Till soon we were scoping the 9th Maleny Folk Festival, an idea that had gathered charm by the country mile.

Mid afternoon found us in a daze of spacious hospitality. Our camp sat four kilometres from a puffing cluster of tepees, tents, cars and bongs which encased the festival site.

Me, my brother Rhys and the writer Neil at our camp pictured soon after our arrival

Dry cobwebs, disfugured chairs, rotting white goods peeling back into the earth. Suspended stakes of dying steel reminding us of the optimism natural elements sometimes show. The lines of earlier communications and material meaning had rusted, fallen into overgrown grass.

Neil Campbell

Amid all this, sitting back and listening to the hum of a closing day, wandering over the compound, we punched a few back, fell to night in a strangely gathered way. Our surrounds crept as day drew by.

Rhys Jenkins

Ric with his daughter

The final morning of 1994 found us well tarnished. We made our way across the plains to the road piled long with goers our way. The walk to the festival site was an event in itself. Disorientation, a touch of bad luck and a very real weirdness had us being chased off the road by Mad John’s lonely stretch bus service.

Torres Straight Island performers

Donald

Well blunted, happy and bleeding, we finally wandered through the Festival gates. Set adrift with an anonymous spectacle. The immediate size undermind by interrelated values, objects, opinions. Focus became a complication. Loose momentum complemented a well tattered attention span. Each site a welcome view, usually engaging, vaguely familiar, uncontained:

Campbell the Swagman

A young boy aged by his hold of the sax blew out steam tunes.

Secret alleys, ones you could discover a day late, with maybe light rain for shade.

A black poet, full of travel, hallowed with crows that have counted all his miles.

Eyes with solitude and pride.

Invisible corridors scratched out by fairies of secret flight.

Soul mates stretched across life times.

Liquor sheds planted with greased celebration.

Calm beauty drifting by, staring you in the face with a spacious grin.

Neil Campbell