4 May 2026: The 30th anniversary of the return of Booderee National Park, NSW to its Traditional Owners was marked with celebration, reflection and storytelling earlier this month, as members of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community gathered with visitors, artists and researchers on Country.
Doonooch Dancers performed a smoking ceremony and cultural dance at the ceremony grounds in Jervis Bay. (ABC Illawarra: Sarah Moss)
Held at Green Patch in Booderee National Park, the event commemorated the 1995 handback of the park to the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council (WBACC) and honoured the enduring relationship between community, culture and Country. The celebrations included cultural performances, community gatherings and the launch of a new anthology of stories from Wreck Bay.
The anthology – called Bugiya Yesterday Nhaway Today Buraadja Tomorrow: Stories from the Wreck Bay People –is the result of a multi-year project that connected Wreck Bay community members with researchers from the University of Canberra’s Faculty of Arts and Design, who were proudly in attendance for the launch.
The University of Canberra team involved in the project includes Cultural Lead, Dr Paul Collis, who is a Barkindji man and a UC alumnus, along with Professor Jen Crawford and Professor Paul Magee.
Professor Magee, Director of the University’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR), which housed the project, said the partnership with the Wreck Bay community emerged from a direct request from community leaders to help preserve and share knowledge.
“Our research engagement on this project was requested by the community back in December 2022, to meet needs related to potential loss of generational knowledge,” he said.
“That’s when we started working with the Wreck Bay Aboriginal community to produce a memoir and anthology of creative writing.”
“The anthology project brought community members together for a series of eight workshops between 2022 and 2025. Some were held here at UC, but most took place in community premises at Wreck Bay.”
Professor Magee said the publication’s launch during the anniversary celebrations underscored the role of storytelling in marking important cultural milestones.
Before the launch, the Doonooch Dancers performed a smoking ceremony and cultural dance on the sand at Green Patch, setting the tone for a day that honoured cultural continuity and community resilience.
Professor Magee said the anthology’s place in the historic 30th anniversary event program – first up on stage after the smoking ceremony and cultural dance – reflected the weight the community placed upon the publication of its stories.
Seeing the importance of the project was a “key highlight” for Professor Magee, who co-led the workshops and helped community members shape their stories and poems for the anthology.
“It is one of the most significant roles I have performed in my 20 years at UC,” he said.
The anthology project forms part of the CCCR’s broader work exploring how creative arts practice can support community engagement and social repair. The University of Canberra team involved in the project includes Professor Magee, Dr Paul Collis and Professor Jen Crawford.
The initiative also connects with Story Ground , a creative outreach and research program based at the University that explores storytelling, community knowledge and cultural expression.
Importantly, the stories remain owned and controlled by the community itself.
“Any proceeds from the publication – or decisions on distribution – are in the hands of the community,” Professor Magee said.
The launch also coincided with a major announcement made during the celebrations: the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council plans to assume sole management of Booderee National Park by 2028.
The move will mark a significant step in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, shifting from the park’s current joint management arrangement with Parks Australia to full community leadership.
The anthology project reflects the University’s commitment to working with First Nations communities through collaborative partnerships shaped by community priorities.
For students and emerging writers, Professor Magee said the project also offers an important lesson about the role of creative practice beyond the page.
“I would like our creative writing students to see that there are many different ways to be an artist,” he said.
“Some involve having your name on the spine of a book, and others are about creating the conditions for other people’s stories to flourish.”
As the Wreck Bay community celebrated three decades since the return of Booderee, the launch of Bugiya Yesterday Nhaway Today Buraadja Tomorrow offered another form of handback – one that ensures the voices, memories and cultural knowledge of the community continue to be shared with future generations.
