Ord Valley Muster: How Kununurra’s special festival was born from a chat and ‘more than a few’ beers

All around Kununurra in the early 2000s, community leaders were separately scheming to find ways to reboot their flagging Kimberley town. With Ansett Airlines on the brink of complete collapse and causing Kununurra concern of even greater isolation in the State’s far north, the town’s annual Ord Festival had also become a shadow of its formerly glittering self and morale was wearing thin. Over more than just a few beers in the now-defunct Ansett lounge, Frank Rodriquez and a few old mates tossed around ideas in a search for something grand. As the “empties” pile grew, more robust discussion flourished in the bid to create the “Leeuwin of the North”. “We knew we needed something on the same scale as a Leeuwin (concert), but doing it our way,” Mr Rodriquez recalled. Simultaneously across town, more structured measures were being formulated at the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where new chief executive Narelle Brook could see financial numbers that demanded action. “We had no money and we had to create something from nothing,” Mrs Brook remembered. “We needed a signature event that could draw a crowd and showcase locations around the place and extend the regular tourism season into the shoulders to start something in May.” As Kununurra’s great minds gradually came together, the Ord Valley Muster was born 20 years ago tomorrow on May 16, 2001. And the latest Muster renewal, headlined by popular Australian singer Jessica Mauboy, is set to bolster the event’s rich tradition when it blasts to life again on Friday. The success has been built on an organic foundation from the first Muster that had WA cricket legend Dennis Lillee as a special guest and lived up to Mr Rodriguez’s promise that it would be done Kununurra-style — particularly at the auction dinner for 500 punters alongside the cane field at rum maker Spike Dessert’s Hoochery. “As you arrived, there were cattle yards and the locals had cowboy hats and whips as they rode horses and mustered you in,” Mr Rodriguez said. “Then the easterlies came in and it dropped to six degrees, it was so cold. We were all drinking rum and having a great time ... I don’t even remember leaving.” Mrs Brook said there were frantic drives back into town ensued to secure jackets and jumpers for the evening where everyone pinned their ears back for the long-awaited party. “It was a ‘ball dress and Blundstone’ theme, so women were in their finery and had boots on ... the last thing you wanted in a paddock were your bloody heels,” said Mrs Brook, cackling as she looked at the original copy of the program she constructed with clip art in her bedroom. Derby-born Mr Rodriguez, who has Aboriginal and Spanish heritage, moved to Kununurra to work for Ansett in 1975. He later became local manager for the airline and president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “I’ve been here 46 years, I’m nearly a local,” the 70-year-old quipped while having a beer at Gulliver’s Tavern. “Kununurra has grown from a very small town. Where we’re sitting now was bush, over where all those buildings are in front of us was bush. But everyone got together and made fun in Kununurra.” Mrs Brook and her husband Paul moved from Perth to Kununurra in 1995, just after they were married. He had given her the choice of either moving to the Kimberley or having a two-week holiday in New Zealand. “This is our 27th year here and for 25 years almost to the day, he would say I was still on my honeymoon and I complained for 25 years that I’d never been to New Zealand,” she said. “So for our 25th wedding anniversary we went to New Zealand just before COVID hit.” She and Mr Rodriguez said they were incredibly proud to have played their role in an event that had established a timeslot on WA’s annual events calendar. The trip down memory lane also prompted thoughts of an ablution area once known as the “Piss Pit”. “We dug a big trench down on the golf course and all the blokes used to just wee in the hole,” she laughed. “It was quite long, but it’s not OK to do that any more, apparently.” She also recalled wearing $250,000 worth of donated jewellery while driving singer John Farnham around town in 2010 before dropping him off and going to work in the confiscated items’ tent at his concert. “I was in there decanting salsa out of glass jars and putting it into plastic containers while wearing a quarter of a million dollars worth of jewellery,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Where else would you do that?’” There were also events over the journey known as the Riverside Rave, an Ord Ecstatica Dance Party, a Knock The Top Off It Bastion Blast, a Biggest Barra BBQ and even a Phoenician Fire, Toga and Temptress Party Cruise. For the first time this year, the Muster will feature an Aboriginal “Storytelling Night”, conducted by local Miriwoong man, David Newry. He believed the unique cultural experience under the stars would help punters better understand his people in the area. “We opened the first Muster with a corroboree and we want to let people know about Miriwoong people,” the 61-year-old said. “We exist in this town on our traditional land and we have a big presence. We’re storytellers — and we have been for centuries — and we want people to know how we’re working for the town as one community.” The West Australian’s travel editor Stephen Scourfield attended several Musters, including the first, and remembered watching a bug-riddled gig by the Darwin Symphony Orchestra in 2004. “The musicians were besieged by a cloud of insects landing on them, crawling on them,” Scourfield said. “I remember one particular female violinist with a thick, long tumble of curly, red hair. Big insects were landing on her and some got caught in that hair and eventually she just freaked, jerked up and stopped playing, trembling and shaking them off. “Others took their turn to do the same, but the orchestra played on.” Now promoted to prospective party-goers as, “truly a bucket list Must’er”, this year’s program features 30 events over nine days. Ord Valley Events chairman Beau Robinson promised the Muster, a multiple WA Tourism Awards winner, would bust out from the coronavirus blues. “We’ve come through a fairly low period into an extremely high period,”Mr Robinson said. “It’s very important for the community to kick-start this tourism season off with a bang and we want to create a ‘fear of missing out’ with the biggest party in the Kimberley.” The Muster has attracted a cavalcade of stars at its hallmark Kimberley Moon event including Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, James Blundell, Wendy Matthews, Marcia Hines, the Hoodoo Gurus, the Doug Anthony All Stars, Kate Ceberano, Amy Shark, Guy Sebastian and Bernard Fanning. It follows a tradition of notable people visiting the town from soon after it was gazetted in 1961. In 1963, a 37-year-old Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Phillip toured the Ord River Diversion Dam just four months before then-Prime Minister Robert Menzies officially opened the project. Mr Menzies described it at the time as, “the most exciting place in Australia”. Kununurra has again recently been forced to embrace change with the closing last November of the Argyle Diamond Mine following 35 years of operation. Mr Rodriguez believed the town would continue to forge on whatever came its way, but would never be as good without the Muster. “The town would still have plodded along even without it, but it wouldn’t have the recognition we have now,” he said.

Ord Valley Muster: How Kununurra’s special festival was born from a chat and ‘more than a few’ beers

The No. 1 source of news for every West Australian