Yuin dancer and songwoman Sharon Mason has been reviving traditional cultural practices on the New South Wales Far South Coast for years and inviting other women on her journey.
Now, she is realising a long-held dream of bringing traditional gatherings back to country.
Late last year, Ms Mason helped lead the region's largest cultural camp in living memory, held on Djiringanj land at Mystery Bay.
Close to 100 men, women and children travelled from as far as Tamworth, Moree, Wellington, Taree and Maitland — and from across Yuin country — to participate in the Yuin Dhugan camp.
They visited sacred teaching areas, gathered traditional medicines and foods, and shared stories, songs and dances.
Sitting around the campfire, they made lifetime connections.
"I've personally seen the difference that country makes for you," said Gomeroi woman Shelly O'Leary.
She travelled from Tamworth to Mystery Bay with women from the Balabalaah Maaru Foundation, which has been focused on reconnecting children in the out-of-home-care system with their culture.
With her partner Ted Fields, Ms O'Leary has also co-founded the Dharriwaa Walaay cultural camp at Narran Lake, near Walgett, which brings hundreds of people to the traditional meeting place each year.
"To get some people there is the hardest part of all," Ms O'Leary said.
"Once you get them on country, they're blown away, because they find something in themselves."
Cultural health and wellbeing
The healing power of these gatherings on sites of cultural significance is being documented in a University of NSW research project called Gaawaadhi Gadudha — a combination of Gomeroi and Yuin words meaning "from freshwater to saltwater".
The study is collecting data on the Narran Lake and Mystery Bay camps to back up anecdotal evidence of their importance for health and wellbeing.
"There are no other camps of this scale in NSW, as far as I am aware", said lead researcher Aryati Yashadhana.
"Access to resources is a barrier, and access to sacred sites and cultural landscapes that are minimally modified by colonisation also poses a barrier.
"The goal is really to produce evidence that supports the running of these kinds of camps."
Bigambul and Gomeroi woman Sheridon Noble has travelled hundreds of kilometres each year from her home in the Hunter Valley to attend both the Narran Lake and Mystery Bay camps.
"From the past 200 years, our people have been conditioned to be hard, to be able to survive," Ms Noble said.
"And when you think of culture, culture is a way of giving back.
"The biggest gift that we got to have from our people is the gift of sharing. Because we never, ever did it alone."
In Ms Noble's Gomeroi language, there is no word for learning.
Instead, the words Winanga-y/Winanga-li means to understand, know, remember, think, love. Winanga-li also means hear, listen.
"You've got to come from a place of love," Ms Noble said.
A cultural reawakening
For Sharon Mason, the cultural camps have been a return to a tradition that was interrupted in her younger years, as her elders focused on fighting for rights and recognition for her people.
As their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren return to country, their cultural knowledge is reawakened.
"We still have culture and we still practise it — not as intense as the old ways, but that will come back," Ms Mason said.
"We don't have to learn it, it's within us."
The Yuin Dhugan camp was supported by Aboriginal Affairs NSW, Katungul Aboriginal Corporation Regional Health and Community Services, Gulaga and Biamanga Board of Management, Eurobodalla Shire Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council's Medical Research Future Fund.
