Laura Dance Festival

Our travel plans are always flexible & so instead of finding ourselves north of Laura following the dance festival we are 5 hours drive south, temporarily back at the farm in Mutchilba that was our 15 month ‘Covid bunker’.

When camped near Cooktown at ‘Home Rule’, we had found our batteries to be struggling, exacerbated by 5 days straight of heavy cloud & very little solar input. Most solar set ups would struggle in the the circumstances, but we suspected ours was struggling more than might be expected. I designed the system to cope with a week plus of such weather & still run our fridge, freezer & CPAP machine, which it has done admirably for years, with an all time voltage low of 12.3v (with early morning pre-sun voltage generally averaging 12.5v). At ‘Home Rule’ they dropped to an all time low of 11.8v. This was concerning but possibly explained by the ageing batteries (almost 10 years old) having lost capacity over their life, in conjunction with the lack of sunlight. Over the next 10 days or so we travelled back to Laura, camping at just a couple of spots, both with good access to the all important sunlight & found everything kept running, with batteries returning to ‘full’ each day. After Horseshoe Lagoon we returned to the Little Laura River, the same spot we had camped at previously , about 30kms west of Laura, still often sunny, but with sufficient cloud activity to make us aware that we were now ‘living on the edge’ power-wise. Precautions were needed to keep the fridge cold & to prevent the freezer full of meat & fish from thawing. By the time we left the Little Laura River several days later, cloud cover had increased & we opted for a night at the Laura Caravan Park where the sites were shady under trees, so for the first time ever we needed to pay for a powered site, to run our 240v battery charger! A further few days later, on the morning after the festival, we left the festival site having got through with everything still frozen but more convinced that we may not be able to maintain this as we headed north. The decision to get replacement batteries was made as we packed to leave. Travelling whilst nursing ailing batteries imposes a need to change how we travel, along with the worry that if we find ourselves without a functioning fridge & freezer those changes become significantly greater. Without the fridge & freezer our ability to travel as we do is compromised. Shops on the Cape are hundreds of kilometres apart, & stock cannot be guaranteed. Our flexibility to be able to stay longer in places we like is compromised if we need to replenish our food stocks every few days. An obvious statement I suppose, but when something has ‘just worked’ for so long it becomes ‘taken for granted’, but it’s failing sharply focuses the mind!

Our decision, given the age of the batteries, was to replace them regardless of how they tested. As it was two of the three batteries tested ok, the third was pronounced ‘cactus’. Three new batteries of the same brand, type & capacity were procured & fitted after consideration of changing to the newer style of lithium batteries.

As it was, whilst back at the Little Laura River we had discovered another issue we needed to sort out. Investigations into the origin of a puddle of water in the back pf the Patrol’s canopy eventually led to the discovery of a split welded seam on the top of our main water tank. ‘Bush mechanic’ efforts to repair the tank’s HDPE plastic with epoxy were a waste of time. It needs to be plastic welded. To remove & replace the batteries, the tank needed to be removed to gain the necessary access – so we have been able to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. A fair bit of dismantling was needed, but now the new batteries are back in & working nicely, & we are expecting to take the tank to a plastic welder chappie in Malanda tomorrow. Once done we will return to our journey up the Cape.

But back to the title of this post. We had applied to be volunteers at the Laura Quinkan Dance Festival. Originally we had hoped that we might be allowed to provide support to the elders from Lockhart River – to help them get around & to see all the dancing, but this was not to be. Disappointing as friends had done similar years ago & still talk of it as something which had given them unprecedented access to cultural understanding and an experience of a lifetime. This year the festival, for the first time, was organised by an ‘Event company’ & it became clear that their expectation of volunteers was that they would undertake ‘festival work’ & supporting elders would not count. Fair enough. For volunteering we received free entry & camping (and a dance festival volunteer’s T shirt). As far as the volunteering went though, their organising was something which evolved over the 3 days of the event. Little thought had been put into it beforehand, very different to our previous festival volunteering experience at Cygnet Folk Festival in Tasmania. A case of ‘make it up as you go along, but somehow it all worked out in the end. Over the 3 days we put in around 12 hours, divided between checking folk in at the entry gate & a stint roving around the extensive bush site with a water tanker driver, helping to refill the flush tanks of the numerous temporary portable toilet cubicles. This left us plenty of time to enjoy the festival.

The festival is a bi-annual event, the longest running aboriginal festival in Australia, but due to a combination of circumstances this year’s festival was the first since 2017. For us it is a festival we had wanted to get to for many years. In the past (& hopefully again in the future) communities from all around Cape York & the Torres Strait islands have sent their traditional dancers to Laura’s Bora ground to compete with each other for the Laura dance shield, a wonderful means of helping to keep traditional culture well & truly alive. The dance groups often come with a large numbers of their communities to support them. Up to 25 different communities, each with their own individual cultures & traditions. These are remote communities & such ‘en-masse’ travel away from country a very significant event. The winners of the shield in 2017 were Lockhart River, who were thus returning to defend their ’top’ position.

Of course we are in ‘different times’ due to Covid. A large proportion of communities who have previously attended understandably felt it wise to protect themselves & not attend this year Numbers (of communities) were further reduced just days before the festival as a result of the first significant ’scare’ ( first lockdown) in Far North Queensland, at Townsville, Magnetic Island & Palm Island, since the pandemic started. The result was an attendance by just eight dance groups. In spite of this it was an exciting event which we loved. We can only imagine the ‘buzz’ that might pervade a fully attended festival, & know that we will attend again in the future, post Covid, if we possibly can. Numbers of non community attendees reached the maximum allowed under the covid event permit.
A couple of communities from Queensland , but not from the Cape sent dance teams to help bolster the numbers. All were excellent, with some obviously used to performing to ‘external’ audiences mixed with communities showing ‘outsiders’ some of their ‘internal culture. It was a heady & enthralling mix. I hope the following selection of photos & video give some idea of what we enjoyed.