By DANE LILLINGSTONE
AS PART of the 2015 Peace Project the Bunya Festival was held at Maryvale on Sunday.
The festival was held at Cicada Woman and featured activities for kids and tours of the local land along with traditional food, especially the use of the Bunya nut.
The festival is a celebration of Aboriginal ideas and culture and is designed around the traditional journey of the Geynyan people of Warwick to the Bunya Mountains north of Dalby.
David Parsons from Cicada Woman said the Bunya nuts play an important part in the festival.
“The story of the Bunya Festival is rich in detail about traditional life. It was possible because catering was handled by the large harvest of bunya nuts, allowing large numbers of people to gather,” he said.
“It details how they ensured sustainability of the bunya trees; it shows the good health linked to the eating of bunyas; it explains how the people used fire to create the well-known bare patches on the mountains to attract wallabies; it illustrates how they used dance and ceremony to teach the young how to burn; it explains how music was composed, recorded and spread to other groups.”
The event was organised and run by local Aboriginal group Waringh Waringh and Cicada Woman Tours.
The final film in the Peace Project film festival is on Sunday 13 September with the film Testament of Youth screening at Warwick Twin Cinema at 2.30pm.
