NAIDOC Day
Members of Kingaroy’s Mounga Hoahoa Tongan Wesleyan Youth Group entertained the crowd at this year’s NAIDOC Week celebrations at the Ration Shed Museum

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.

NAIDOC Week
Jessica Sloane, Robyn Hallewell, Gloria Bell and Cheryl Cooper from the Many Threads Sewing Group were serving up cakes, scones and popcorn for hungry guests
NAIDOC Week
Nathan Collins, Chantelle Mickelo and Shelly Hansen, from the Bunya Mountains Murri Rangers, were on hand to provide information about their work reviving indigenous influence on the cultural and natural landscape of this important National Park

NAIDOC Week
Several hundred people packed the Museum’s amphitheatre to enjoy the day’s entertainment program

NAIDOC Week
Isiah Fisher and Harold Saltner had fun browsing the many exhibits spread around the Museum’s grounds
NAIDOC Week
Natalia Phillips-Petersen showed her friends from the Mounga Hoahoa Tongan Wesleyan Youth Group how to play the xylophone in the Sound Garden set up in the Museum’s grounds for the day
NAIDOC Week
Cr Kathy Duff, chairman of the South Burnett & Cherbourg On Show committee, was keen to sign up Rory Boney and Harold “Big Chance” Chapman’s new group Deadly Wayz to play at this year’s festival
NAIDOC Week
Robyn Hofmeyr, from the Ration Shed, shows Stanwell’s Darren Schmidt the Museum’s new “Play The Ball” exhibition which opened the day before
NIDOC Week
Education, anyone? Ethan McIntosh and Kelvin Yow Yeh travelled up from Brisbane’s QUT to provide information about university courses; Ethan is about to graduate as a primary school teacher and Kelvin as a social worker