Garma Festival.

Every August, something happens in the Top End that most Australians never get to see — and it's honestly one of the most extraordinary things this country has to offer. It's called Garma Festival...and our radio team will be heading there this year.

The word "Garma" itself is a Yolŋu Matha term for "two-way learning process" — a place where freshwater and saltwater meet, where old and young, Yolŋu and balanda (non-Indigenous people) come together as one. That philosophy isn't just the name of the festival. It's the whole point of it.

It all started in 1999, when Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu and his brother Dr M. Yunupingu — the iconic frontman of Yothu Yindi — led the very first Garma. It was a small gathering, really. A conversation about self-determination, wellbeing, and what the future could look like for Yolŋu people. The site they chose, Gulkula, was once described by the late Mungurrawuy Yunupingu as "an all-encompassing philosophical, physical, cosmological, theoretical place" where Yolŋu "have danced from the beginning." Not a bad spot to start something.

It was conceived at a time when many Elders genuinely feared their cultural knowledge was being lost — and what grew from that fear and that determination is now something remarkable. Twenty-six years later, Garma is Australia's largest Indigenous cultural gathering, drawing more than 2,500 people to a remote ceremonial site deep in northeast Arnhem Land. Tickets sell out months in advance.

Each evening, as the yidaki (didgeridoo), bilma (clapsticks) and voices of the songmen ring out across the grounds, men, women and children from the Yolŋu clan groups perform bunggul — traditional dances connected to the land and sea Country of each clan. The children watch, learn, and practise their birthright. Elders share their stories through manikay (song). It has been called one of the world's oldest living musical traditions.

But Garma is more than ceremony and culture. It has become a genuinely important moment on Australia's national calendar. Over the years, what unfolds at Gulkula has reverberated around the country — in boardrooms and lounge rooms, in government departments and inside Parliament. Prime Ministers have attended. Indigenous leaders, academics, health workers, business figures and community members sit together on the red dirt and talk about the things that actually matter.

This year, the theme is 'Bukmak' (Everyone) and Garma runs from Friday 31 July to Monday 3 August 2026 at the Gulkula site on Gumatj Country — and our team will be right there on the ground, soaking it in and bringing the stories back to you.