‘Help Country’: How a tiny endangered possum inspired this new children’s show

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Just over a year ago, theatre artist Yolande Brown and her then nine-year-old son woke early in Kosciuszko National Park to count bogong moths.

Joining Dr Linda Broome, a threatened species expert, they set out across the alpine region to open bucket light traps, each temporarily holding the native nocturnal species known for flying 1000 kilometres during their annual migration from warmer climes.

Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts in The Bogong’s Song.

“As soon as you opened the bucket, there was this scent,” Brown says. “It smelt like nectar because they’d been pollinating the flowering plants in the area.”

The day before, Brown, a descendant of the Bidjara clan of the Kunja nation in central Queensland, had joined Broome in counting mountain pygmy possums, a tiny endangered tree-dwelling marsupial whose population has been affected by drought and the 2020-21 bushfires.

“They were no bigger than the palm of your hand,” Brown says. “Some had babies in their pouches. They were wriggly and feisty because it was windy and that was getting under their fur.”

The reason Brown travelled to the annual alpine species count was her theatre work, The Bogong’s Song: A Call to Country, a new children’s show created for Bangarra Dance Theatre.

Incorporating storytelling, dance, video, shadow puppetry and original songs, the show, made for children aged five and up, features performers Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts as siblings on the eve of travelling to be with their grandmother.

Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts play siblings coping without their brother in Bangarra’s The Bogong’s Song.

“They pack their bags and, after falling asleep, they enter the bogong’s dream as fractals of the bogong’s imagination,” Brown says. “They’re given a mission to find a missing bogong moth and they get separated on their journey. They meet different creatures, each with something to share and teach them.”

Among them are the pygmy possum and the Guthega skink, another endangered alpine species. They also encounter an old snow gum and the soft, delicate grasses of the Kosciuszko alpine area.

Brown, a former Bangarra senior artist and co-CEO of Indigenous mentoring organisation AIME, says the show, co-written by Brown and Chenoa Deemal, is partly about protecting and respecting Country and its creatures, and partly about the siblings dealing with life without their absent brother, who is in juvenile detention.

“They’re learning about how to be stronger for themselves,” Brown says. “Because when they’re strong, they can also help family and help Country. And, when Country is strong, we’re all strong.”

Tjilala Brown-Roberts creating the world of the bogong moth.

The siblings also use Auslan when talking about their brother because he is deaf. Early in the show’s creation, deaf consultant James Kerwin asked if the work was about the bogong moth because there was a deaf child in the story.

“I said no, and he explained that deaf people are often paralleled to moths because both need the light,” Brown says. “You can’t sign or lip-read in the dark. He said if you’re in the street, you’d gather under the street lights with the moths to sign.”

Giving the bogong moth a speaking voice in the work inspired another connection. At first, Brown and her collaborators tried using filters on a vocal recording, but it sounded artificial. Then they thought of a child’s voice.

Now, Brown’s son, Xavier, is the bogong moth’s voice, guiding the characters and audience through its dreams, flight and world.

“It’s truly come full circle,” Brown says. “Xavier got to go on Country, he was part of the show’s exploration and he’s been involved from the get-go.

“It’s lovely because he’s really put his heart into it.”

The Bogong’s Song is at Bangarra Dance Theatre, Hickson Road
Walsh Bay, until October 19, bangarra.com.au