The annual Barunga Festival features the bunggul, where traditional Aboriginal dancers show their skills.

And then the women came out to dance.

This is what I saw.

On Sunday morning Grace “how dare you call me right-wing” Collier was a guest on the Outsiders segment of Radio National’s Sunday Extra, hosted by Jonathan Green.
Collier had earlier tweeted that she was hopeful of “lift[ing] the mood a little at 9.30 when I come on” following what she described as being a “depressing discussion about happiness!” between host Green and a national treasure, cartoonist Michael Leunig.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu walked onto stage at the annual Barunga Festival to adoring applause from the thousands that gathered for his first public show in the NT for five years.
These days Gurrumul plays as much for royalty and presidents as for the common people and the faithful turned up in drives to witness the all-too-rare return to country of a beloved son too long away. Gurrumul last played Darwin in a closed show for US President Barack Obama in late 2011.

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Barunga is a small town on the southern fringes of Arnhem Land that for three days every year hosts a sports and cultural festival. After a few down years, this year the festival has been revived by the vigour and professionalism of Darwin-based recording and production company Skinnyfish Music.

Barunga is in the lands of the Bagala clan of the Jawoyn language group and it was heartening to see the fact of that ownership stated emphatically by their representative Samuel Bush-Blanasi and recognised by politicians from the federal and local parliaments.

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All,

The following note is from Alan James, who’s in East Arnhem Land with the Yunupingu family.

Note that vision of Mr M is now able to be used.

Two weeks past this Wednesday I was having breakfast with Lennie and his old buddies at George’s Restaurant, a local diner on the corner of South Broadway & Highway 380 in the small west Texas town of Post.

Earlier today Warren Snowdon and Peter Garrett, two men who knew the former singer of Yothu Yindi well and over many years, spoke to the media about his passing.

This is the transcript of their press conference. I note that use of the man’s name has been omitted in accordance with cultural sensitivities.

It is with great sadness that I report that Mr. Yunupingu* passed away surrounded by his family at his north-east Arnhemland home last evening.

Many of you will have your own stories about this wonderful man taken too soon and I hope you’ll post them here. You can read more at the ABC News piece here.

This is a guest post from Celeste Liddle that presents an edited (for length) version of her open letter to Member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly Bess Price following Ms Price’s comments during an Adjournment Debate in the Northern Territory Parliament on 16 May 2013.

You can read the full transcript of that speech on the NT Parliament Daily Hansard. An edited version was posted at the Alice Springs News site. Celeste’s original post can be seen – along with all of her worthwhile rants – here.

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This is a guest post from my mate Peter Shaw, who for his sins now lives on the Gold Coast of Queensland.

“The plentiful stocks of fish encouraged the development of a fishing industry in the region [Tweed Heads/Coolangatta] in the early 1900s and it was soon booming. Perhaps the most famous and successful fishermen in the Tweed were the Boyds. The six Boyd brothers, Jack, Herb, Fred, Charlie, Bob and George grew up in Tweed Heads and became legendary beach net fishermen. They fished for sea mullet, tailor, king fish, [white bait/pichards] and jewfish and some of their hauls were enormous. In the 1930s a single haul from Kirra Beach filled over one thousand 18lb cases of sea mullet.”