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Open Right

Ron Murray: Aboriginal Culture – Didgeridoo and Storytelling

Session Info:

Ron’s primary school workshops have an interactive approach, allowing students to experience Aboriginal culture, with a focus on music, storytelling and Indigenous history.

As a didgeridoo musician, Ron begins each session by playing didgeridoo as a traditional welcome, and then talks about how he makes his didgeridoos, raises some of the cultural issues around didgeridoo playing and gives a demonstration on how to make the animal sounds and circular breathe (including giving volunteers a didgeridoo massage).

Ron brings along his artefact collection, which contains many special objects which he allows the students to touch, such as his 100 year old kangaroo rug (a family heirloom passed down from his mother’s people) stone tools, coolomons and shields.

Ron talks about how Aboriginal people used to live, and how they continue to practice their traditions today. He also speaks about aspects of Aboriginal history, and raises some of the current issues important to Indigenous people. Ron tailors his discussions of Aboriginal history and current issues to the age group he is working with.

Ron interweaves Aboriginal Dreamtime stories into his presentations, keeping alive the dreaming stories of South Eastern Aboriginal Australia.

Weather permitting, Ron finishes some sessions with a boomerang demonstration (he was Queensland Boomerang Champion in 1999) and gives students the opportunity to throw boomerangs (in a very supervised way). As part of this, he talks about how he learned to make boomerangs the old way his grandfather taught him (using redgum roots), and shows the students his ancient boomerang stone tool which helps him shape the boomerang and get it to return.

Topics:
  • Indigenous people in South Eastern Australia
  • Aboriginal culture, stories and music
  • Indigenous connection to sacred places and the environment – sharing of his artefact collection