'In October this year, Toby Finlayson and myself travelled to Boggabilla to visit Matthew Priestley, in far north west NSW, near the QLD border. Although Toby has been out there many times, this was my first trip. We spent the week with Matt and his wonderful family.

During the time spent there, we visited Matt's brother and Father, met some Elders who I talked to at length, went bush for a couple of days in order to visit traditional initiation grounds ("Bora grounds"), saw traditional coroboree sites, lots of rock carvings, rock art and meeting grounds.

We also went goanna hunting, fishing, saw a traditional white ochre quarry, and saw ancient burial grounds (which have been recently fenced off due to illegal sand mining from the site by farmers.)

We also visited Toomelah mission, and Toomelah mission cemetary, the proposed site of our next project.

The main idea that stemed from the cemetary visit is to include a large corroborree area or dance circle on the walkway between the chapel and the cemetary.

Performances are currently often given in this area, usually by young males, to farewell family and loved ones as they do the last walk to be buried.

It is just dust at the moment, and we want to do something about it.

We ate some traditional meals, including 'Murray Curry' and 'Johnny Cakes', all of which were delicious.

Rachel (Matt's wife) did a great job of making us feel right at home, as well as accomodating another 20 family members or so for the NRL grand final weekend.

We also made a hip hop track with Sinead, Matt's niece, Tanner and Jordy, a couple of local lads.

It is about re-connecting to their culture through story telling, and respect for elders.

I still have some production work to do on it, but they did a wonderful job of recording, and I learn lots from the kids as well as Toby.

I hope to be back there as soon as possible.

Until next time,

Joel.'