The Festival.
The Furneaux Islands Festival is an opportunity for us to come together and celebrate where we live, the strength of our shared culture and community, and, in doing so, to celebrate Australia’s multicultural heritage.
The Furneaux Islands Festival, which started in 2014 as a Flinders Council initiative, is held over three days at various locations on Flinders Island, with a number of community events around Australia Day.
Between 2012 and 2013, the Flinders Council held several workshops to discuss options for an inclusive Australia Day celebration. It was recognised by the elected members that celebrating on the 26th of January was divisive for a significant portion of the Islands’ community, as the date evoked strong negative feelings on a day intended to be a celebration of our National Day.
In response, in November 2013, the Council supported a motion put forward by the Mayor, leading to the creation of the first Furneaux Islands Festival. There were no activities on Australia Day, 26 January; however, the day was kept free for community members to choose how they would like to spend it.
At that time, two local residents, Judy Jacques and Sandro Donati, were curating an exhibition on the history of music and dance on the Furneaux Islands at the Furneaux Museum in Emita on Flinders Island. This exhibition, with a strong Aboriginal component, highlighted the first recordings of Aboriginal singer Fanny Cochrane Smith in 1896. It also showcased the unique string band music that evolved on Cape Barren Island through the Brown Brothers in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, along with the islands’ balls, dances, theatre productions, local musicians, performers, and everything related to music and dance up to the present.
Judy and Sandro planned a music event to link with their museum exhibition, and it made sense to combine this with the Council-supported Australia Day event, thus creating the Festival.
A festival highlight is the Community BBQ Day hosted at FIAAI (Flinders Island Aboriginal Association), offering an opportunity for the community to come together and enjoy music from the Furneaux Region and beyond. This celebrates the greatness of the place we live in and acknowledges the history that makes these island communities what they are today: diverse, strong, resourceful, and caring.