NAIDOC WEEK is a annual celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture

This week we supported NAIDOC Week by cooking a barbeque lunch for a Children’s Day organised by the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.

Here is President Alan with Brian and two ‘Honorary Rotarians for the Day’ Rob and Kevin cooking up a storm.

The day was very well supported exceeding VACCA’s expectations

A spectacular arrangement of cup cakes made up this representation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Flags.

In our celebration of the event we are republishing this poem by Rex Ingamells

The Camp Fires of the Past

A thousand, thousand camp fires every night,
in ages gone,
would twinkle to the dark
from crest and valley in the rolling bush,
from mulga and mallee scrub,
from dunes of Central sand,
from gaps in straggling ranges,
from gibber plains and plains of iron-wood,
through leaves and in the open,
from the mangroves by shore of Carpenteria,
from rocks and beaches of the Bight …
for countless aeons,
a thousand, thousand camp fires burned each night,
and, by the fires, the Old Men told their tales
which held their listeners spellbound …
Every night among the fires men chanted to the beat
of stick and boomerangs and clap of hands,
or drone-and-boom of didgeridoo,
the songs rising and falling,
trailing,
quickening,
while eyes gleamed bright,
through smoke drift, bodies shone
and dusked in fitful glow amid the shadows. . .