July 8, 2014
The NAIDOC Community Open Day at Cherbourg’s Ration Shed Museum on Tuesday featured everything from films to flag-raisings, from dancing to damper.
The town’s largest NAIDOC Week celebration included a wreath-laying to remember Australia’s Aboriginal servicemen and reflected this year’s NAIDOC theme: “Serving Country: Centenary & Beyond”.
NAIDOC Week is Australia’s national annual celebration of indigenous culture, history and achievement.
In the Ration Shed amphitheatre and adjoining streets, crowds sat and stood (and many leaned over the fence) to watch a morning program of live entertainment that included an enthusiastic display of Islander dancing by Kingaroy’s Mounga Hoahoa Tongan Wesleyan Youth Group.
Visitors explored the museum complex, enjoying a variety of films and the new “Play The Ball” exhibition about the town’s many sporting heroes.
Outside, there were food and information stalls and the popular Sound Garden.
For a gold coin donation, visitors enjoyed a delicious camp oven lunch of chicken curry, steak and kidney stew or roo and vegetable stew whipped up on an open campfire, while others queued for sausage sandwiches and hamburgers in the park across the road.
One element missing from this year’s celebrations was a performance by the popular Muddy Flats band which – sadly – disbanded a few months ago.
But all is not lost!
Muddy Flats’ front man Rory Boney has teamed up with Harold “Big Chance” Chapman and several former Muddy Flats members, and they’ll be making their debut as “Deadly Wayz” in the near future.
South Burnett and Cherbourg On Show committee chairman Cr Kathy Duff is so confident they’ll be great that she has booked the group to perform at this year’s October long weekend festival, sight unseen.
- Related article: Good Sports Launch NAIDOC Week
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