Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Every year, as the Queen's Birthday weekend arrives on the calendar, I become excited and ready for a party, not necessarily because it's the Queen's birthday but because I know I'll be making my annual pilgrimage to the Barunga Festival at Barunga, around 90 kays south-east of Katherine. A community of around 320 people, it is the home of the iconic Barunga Festival, one of the longest-running festivals of its type in Australia. It has been held every year since 1985, and I have been to most of those celebrations.

There have been a few occasions when it hasn't progressed, as in last year with COVID, but by and large it has happened every year. It's a proud tradition of celebrating the best of remote Aboriginal Australia, and I want to thank the generosity of the traditional owners, the Bagala and the Jawoyn people, for opening their community to share their country and their culture when I was there on the Queen's birthday weekend. It attracts around 4,000 people, both First Australians and the broader community, from all over the country, who descend on this small remote community to camp and take part in the extensive three-day program of music, sport, traditional arts and cultural activities. They play footy, and one of the teams was short of a few players, so their coach wandered around the camping ground and spotted a couple of Victorians and said, 'Do you feel like a game?' They ended up playing for two days!

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