Burarra Gathering - Sharing Indigenous Knowledge

This website gives a sense of the people, land, language and traditional technologies and knowledge of the Burarra people of Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory.

Visit the Burarra People

Questacon's Burarra Gathering Online Adventure let's you learn about Burarra traditional technology.

Visit the Burarra People Online Adventure

You can take a virtual trip to the land of the Burarra people, and be guided by Danaja, a young Burarra man, and his grandfather, Wala Wala.

You will need to complete a permit to travel onto Aboriginal land. You will also have to decide whether to travel in the wet or the dry season.

Once you're there you will be taken off into the bush on an adventure to learn about some of the Burarra people's traditional technology.

During your visit you will see many words written in yellow. You can click on those words to find out what the words mean.

Recognition and Awards

The Exploratorium in San Francisco recognised Burarra Gathering with a Ten Cool Sites Award for educational excellence. USA Today made Burarra Gathering one of their Hot Sites and Yaholigans! made it a top 5 Cool Site. Burarra Gathering also won $5000 in the inaugural South Australian Premier's Children's and Youth Educational Software Awards.

The following icons link to the respective award sites.

Technical Information

The online adventure uses high quality Flash MX animation. The background photographs used in the animation are all of the real locations, from Maningrida Airport to the bush around Yilan.

Depending on your particular internet connection you may want to take advantage of our 'download site' feature. The site download will take 30 minutes or so on a 56 kbps modem. You will then be able to move from one scene to the next with no waiting. This feature is also useful for teachers who want their whole class to use Burarra Gathering at the same time.

Burarra Gathering at Questacon

If you've recently been to Questacon in Canberra you may remember seeing Burarra Gathering: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge in Gallery One. The physical exhibition inspired the development of this online exhibition.

Questacon's 15th Birthday

Burarra Elders Horace Wala Wala and Peter Danaja were special guests. Also pictured are Questacon Deputy Director - Programmes, Neil Hermes and Burarra Gathering Project Manager Jenny Dettrick. Photo by G Crane.

While the two Burarra Gatherings share common themes they are quite different in approach, and neither relies on the other. Currently the exhibition is open at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. We hope that you will be able to experience Burarra Gathering at the Gallery.

A Special Visit

In November 2003 Questacon celebrated 15 years of operating in our current building.

At the same time Burarra Elders Horace Wala Wala and Peter Danaja (who lend their names to the characters in the online adventure) were in Canberra to attend a conference.

We were delighted that they could come and join in the fun at our party.

Arraboy! (Let's go!)