Giiyong Festival - 9 November 2024

Walking Together in the Milton Ulladulla District supported two Ulladulla community trips with free transport and tickets to the Giiyong Festival, thanks to grant funds from FRRR for the community development project ‘Together We Thrive’. 

45 people registered to attend, approximately 3-in-4 being First Nations. (Sadly, a very prevalent gastro outbreak in Ulladulla in the week beforehand meant some families couldn’t come, taking numbers down to 24.)

Giiyong Festival provides a rare opportunity in South East NSW for the entire community to come together in celebration of Aboriginal arts, culture and resilience. It is a loud, proud, culturally affirming event that honours south coast Aboriginal cultures.  Giiyong (pronounced guy-yong) means ‘come to welcome’ in the south coast language as spoken by local Elders.  Everyone is welcome at Giiyong Festival, which brings the best Aboriginal performers, presenters and speakers in one big day including: Barkaa, Kobie Dee, Nooky, Benny Walker, Chef Mark Olive, Sean Choolburra, Clarence Slockee, Amanda Reynolds, Bush Tucker Bunjie, Shane Herrington, Duurunu Miru Dancers, Punkaliyarra, Baalang Millingballo Bugan project with Marra-Wanggan Cultural Services, Dale Robert Huddleston, Djaadjawan Dancers, Ron Callaghan, Vivian Mason, Ripple Effect Band, Ray Timbery of Gadhungal Marring, and the Djidjarns. 

Miribi Bunbal, the Ulladulla High School youth didg’ group, attended a two-day cultural camp around the Giiyong trip. They gathered foods, made spears, created art and practiced didg’ together. At Giiyong, they played in the didg’ jam session and hugely enjoyed the whole celebration. 

First Nations individuals in attendance loved the celebration and many expressed wanting to reconnect with cultural opportunities afterwards: “This has been so amazing. I want to get more involved in our dance group.” 

Non-Indigenous attendees also expressed valuable learnings and critical self-reflections in conversations throughout the Festival and the bus trip home together, such as:

“It’s funny, but even with everyone being so welcoming, it took me probably a couple of hours to settle in and really feel welcome and feel at ease. I haven’t experienced that in a while, where I’m the minority.”  

“The really powerful and amazing thing for me is this experience of cultural immersion. It’s not just that the dancers and performers are so good and so powerful, but it’s stepping into their world. On the site you can actually feel the difference in it being owned anrun by Aboriginal community, and everything about the day is immersed in their own ways of being and doing things. I think that experience of total cultural immersion is really special, and sets it apart from other events where a talk or something is held in a town hall or school or something.” 

All who attended expressed deep gratitude and very positive experiences being immersed in Aboriginal community and cultural celebration. Many said it was amazing to be able to come along without any financial barriers. 

Thank you so much to everyone who came along for this amazing celebration. Thank you to FRRR for supporting the project ‘Together We Thrive’ with initiatives like this to bring community together.

Walking Together volunteers will do our best to try to obtain funds earlier and help plan a larger community camping trip in future.