Present for the reading were members of Theona’s family including siblings Derek Councillor and Nikki Councillor and Cousin Peta Thompson. Representing the youth were Esther Bullen and Tom Jenkins. Theona’s collaborator and co-producer, George Criddle arrived from Melbourne for the week.  George along with Amanda Rowland, were there as representative of the descendants of the colonists who planned and carried out the massacre/s.

As the group introduced themselves, Amanda talked of her fears. For her, the opportunity to lay some family ghosts to rest was both thrilling and frightening. She knew that her forebear, John Nicol Drummond, policeman, would be front and centre in the killing, and braced herself for what was to come.

The reading began with the battle of the fresh water and saltwater serpents relating to the foundation story of the Greenough River. The voices of Naaguja ancestors and the land wove through the lives of the Aboriginal people in their bush camp at the Springs near the estuary. Theona’s songs were a simple and powerful testament to the beauty of this way of life and the Naaguja language.

The colonialists got short shift as symbols of oppression. They were there to remove any resistance to the taking of the land and they did it armed with guns and the full arrogance of laws imposed by a foreign power.  The story focused on the Naaguja people. What rang through the play was the sense of the beauty of a lost way of life, and the deep power that resides in truth-telling and the reconnection of an ancient language to the land.

WHAT’S NEXT

The next engagement for this band of creatives is set for late February. The team will assemble again over a four-day period, to develop the staging of the opera. At the end of this time, excerpts from the production will be staged before a small audience. A video of this event will be used to attract the funding required to stage the opera at the Geraldton Big Sky Writers and Readers Festival in October 2025.

Also, in 2025, as part of the Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week celebrations, the documentary of the 170^th Anniversary of the massacre at Pelican Springs will be shared with the public as part of the Geraldton Museum’s contributions.

*Wayne Freer withdrew from the project after this Creative Development period for personal reasons.