Author: Nards Rementilla

Learnings from the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games will be used to promote Aboriginal language use in the lead up to the Brisbane Olympics in 2032.

SEQILC Director Rory O’Connor said strategic lobbying and targeted community projects linked to the 2018 event had resulted in Yugambeh language being enjoyed and used by tens of thousands of locals, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

Mr O’Connor told a language forum at the Brisbane Exhibition Centre that major events are a good catalyst to promote cultural outcomes.

Aboriginal community members accompanied Borobi to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Royal Family in 2017. Borobi, a Yugambeh word for koala, was used to name the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games mascot. It was the first time in history a local Indigenous word was used to name a mascot for either the Olympic or Commonwealth Games. 

The Yugambeh language’s digital journey has been captured in the prestigious International Journal on Digital Studies 2025.

The 12-page article traces the origins of community language revival from the 1980s through to the development of Australia’s first language app in 2012. It also examines the work of Rory O’Connor and other community members with Google Arts and Culture to produce Woolaroo in 2019, a free-to-access web-based language app that is now used by Indigenous communities world-wide.

The article is co-authored by SEQILC Director Rory O’Connor and Cat Kutay, an Aboriginal linguist and scholar from Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory.

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Aboriginal Author Cat Kutay from Charles Darwin University spent two years working on the story of Yugambeh’s digital journey. 

The actions of two quick thinking children saved the ancient water spirit Yawk Yawk when she was taken prisoner by a commercial water distributor on a rainforest mountain in Queensland.

That’s the basis of a tale created by Aboriginal artist Abigail Chaloupka, herself a resident on Tamborine Mountain, inland from the Gold Coast. Abi was joined in performance by SEQILC Director Rory O’Connor, who introduced local traditional language to the tale.

Abi curated the story for the annual Tamborine Mountain Arts Trail, which is a weekend of arts and exhibitions hosted by locals.

“I wanted to bring attention to the 100,000 tonnes of water that is taken from Tamborine Mountain by large companies including Coca Cola Amatil each year,” Abi explained.

“Water is a cultural item, but it is taken without any compensation or even recognition of the communities that have looked after these water sources forever.”

In Abi’s story, Yawk Yawk is sucked into a water processing truck and sold in a fish and chip shop. Luckily she is spotted by two savvy Aboriginal siblings who release Yawk Yawk back into a local waterfall.

Abigail Chaloupka enthralled audiences with her story of Yawk Yawk, an Aboriginal spirit captured by water collection companies on Tamborine Mountain in the Gold Coast hinterland.