What an absolute epic day at the Festival of Torbay with a massive celebration of all things Torbay and to celebrate 25 years of the Torbay Catchment Group!
We were honoured to begin our day with a beautiful Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony led by Vernice Gilles from Kurrah Mia.
This was followed by the energetic Mooditch Nop cultural dancers. Moorditch Nop translates to Deadly Boys. Under the guidance of Minang elders, the young men in their transitioning to adulthood are taught the importance of cultural meanings in the dreamtime, when animals and men were the same and how the dance becomes part of their lives when hunting and understanding country. Paying their respects to the ancestors, animals and country in a performance designed to highlight ancient storylines and build cultural connection within the soul.
The Cockatoo Tent featured local cockatoo legend Sandra Gilfillan and cockatoo expert Sam Rycken who hosted a nestbox monitoring workshop and provided loads of information on our three endangered black cockatoo species.
The Frog Tent housed Holly Butterworth who showed us how to build a frog hotel for our little green friends to protect them from predators and keep them wet and cool.
If you managed to get to the Flora Tent, you would have found Serena McLauchlan with her nature art workshops, Mark Parre showing us how to propagate native plants and The Village making lovely herbal balms!
In the Building Area, there was local possum legend Bronte Van Helden teaching us all about the endangered western ringtail possum. Along with David Donnelly showing us how to build a possum nestbox and TCG’s Pete Barnes building a possum drey.
If you felt like a walk, there was many exciting and educational walking tours on offer! Such as a bird walk with Andrew Dickinson, cultural walks with Larry Blight, a nature discovery walk with Angela Dickinson, a weed walk with Karen McKeough and a ‘Go with the Flow’ walk by Healthy Estuaries WA all about the health of the local waterways and how it is monitored.
The main stage consisted of many fascinating educational talks, such as the annual Healthy Estuaries Science Forum which presented data on the health of the water flowing in the Torbay catchment into the Torbay inlet, the Torbay Bushfire Brigade presented information on getting prepared for the upcoming fire season and we were entertained by fabulous local musicians Mobile Zebra, Harmonix, The Playlist Choir, The Zazzies and Mov, and had fun making of clay seed creatures by The Village!
A special thanks to the Southern Aboriginal Corporation rangers who gave their support and expertise and a huge thanks to all the legendary presenters, fabulous contributors, participants, and the many wonderful volunteers who all helped make this first ever Festival of Torbay an enormous success!
