Woggan ma gule

Yesterday was Australia Day, which is the slightly more extreme equivalent of our Independence Day . Some people refer to Aussie Day as Discovery Day, while others refer to it as Survival Day. If you know anything about the ongoing conflict between European and Indigenous Australians, this disparity is unsurprising. There are infinite activities, events, festivals, performances, etc. offered, and we have been told Sydney is the place to be for the celebration.

Late Monday evening, we were informed by a friend that there was a performance starting at 8 am on Aussie Day featuring traditional Aboriginal dance and music. The participants are all descendants of the Gadigal people, who lived on the shores of Sydney harbor. The morning ceremony is called Woggan ma gule, and it's located in the Royal Botanical Gardens in a spot that is significant to the Gadigal people. It marks the original shoreline of the harbor and also used to be the site of male initiation ceremonies.

What can I say other than it. was. amazing. We woke up at 6:30, RA Dan made us some delicious stuffed French toast, and we headed to the gardens and were all so impressed by the performance. It was completely different than I expected it would be, and I'm so glad we made the effort to go. I would say the most significant thing I took away from the experience was an awareness of how Indigenous peoples have gradually adapted to modern society, whether they wanted to or not. Some of the music they used in the performance was pre-recorded and mixed by a DJ of sorts. The live music mainly consisted of one or two older tribe members singing and a few supplementary instruments.

I also thought of a moment from my freshman year at SMU during the performance. We had a guest artist come to teach us a type of African dance, and at the time I was so unappreciative of the privilege of learning the traditional movements. Seeing an Aboriginal dance firsthand that has been passed down for centuries made me so aware of how meaningful the movements are to them. Every step was so clearly derived from nature, which was amazing to me because I've always favored classical ballet because it's more asthetically pleasant to me. I still love ballet, but it's different to me now. I've already found a couple of great ballet studios around where I live, but I'm going to look around for classes offering Aboriginal dance.

After the dance performance, we walked along the shoreline through the Botanical Gardens for a few hours. At this point it was only about 8:45 am, so our friends were all still fast asleep and we had some time to kill before the festivities began. We walked by the Opera House steps and through Circular Quay before we went back home.

At home, we all gathered on the roof for a little while in our Aussie pride gear. We left for the beach a little later after sharing some midday wine and snacks! We started at Bondi, then walked along the same cliff walk to Bronte where we met up with a bunch of other friends. In retrospect, I remember only putting sunscreen on my face and shoulders, but miraculously did NOT get burned even though I was in my bathing suit the whole day! From there, we came back home for about an hour to shower and regroup, and in the meantime completely missed the fireworks. Oops! We heard they were pretty cool, but not as impressive as some people expected. We finally went to Cargo Bar at about 8:30 pm, which is on King Street Wharf right in Circular Quay, and tore up the dance floor for hours! It was so much fun that we stayed until about 1:30 am despite our early wake-up that morning.

The whole day was a ton of fun, and I think my favorite part of it, aside from the dance performance, was just talking to locals and seeing how truly proud of and in love with Australia they are. Everywhere we went, people were sporting red, white, and blue and Aboriginal red, yellow, and black. I've definitely never seen such a huge-scale celebration before.

Despite the lack of mass-celebration, I hope everyone's January 26th was as fun-filled as ours was!

One final note- my friend Kate is a photojournalism major at BU, and she takes some absolutely stunning photos. She loves taking pictures of people, which is great for us because she captures a lot of amazing moments. Here's the link to her website, which she will continue to update throughout the semester. I'll keep posting the link when she updates so you can take a look at her most recent stuff! She's the best!
http://katesampphotography.com/