One of the biggest remote communities in the Northern Territory has gathered for a cultural festival, bringing in people from the surrounding homelands and further afield for a celebration of footy, dance and rock n roll. It's a relatively new fixture on the NT's festival calendar but local leaders say it's already becoming an important, unifying event.
00:00Under a glowing evening sky, the main ceremonial groups of Wadair take turns displaying their cultural dances.
00:12A weekend of togetherness for this large remote community in the west of the Top End that has faced its share of challenges in recent years.
00:22The vision for the festival is to create an event which will celebrate our culture, music, sport and the respect we share for each other.
00:33As night falls, the local rock band takes to the stage.
00:41It's important for us, you know, like, what are people and it's good for them to have a play and make them happy.
00:51This festival is only a few years old but the traditional owners of Wadair say it's an important priority for them, bringing the clans together in celebration.
01:00The reason why it's, we're making a festival from the TL people of Wadair to make this Wadair a better place to keep young boys and young girls stopping all doing all the bad things, violence like that.
01:15So we want to try to keep that part of it, try to keep young boys coming together and work together as a family.
01:24Traditional owner Pascal Coulombut also welcoming a volunteer contingent of pro AFL players and coaches up from Adelaide to help run a carnival in this footy-mad community.
01:36It's intense, you know. There's some superstar footballers out here. They take it very seriously. It's a lot quicker.
01:43I don't even bother chasing a lot of the boys because I'll probably do a hamstring or something like that.
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