Cover Image: Mark Atkins and Erkki Veltheim bring music, story, and Country to life in Mungangga Garlagula: Yarning by the Fire. Photo: Kristian Gehradte.

Mungangga Garlagula: Yarning by the Fire
Presented by Tura at Heath Ledger Theatre
11 August 2025

Prior to ‘Mungangga Garlagula: Yarning by the Fire’, the audience is informed the show is ‘part concert, part theatre’, so we are invited to abstain from applauding until the end. 

And thunderous applause it was – this Tura production is every bit as classy and innately original as Tura itself. Important too was that the spell-like quality of Mark Atkins’ gravelly voice and Erkki Veltheim’s evocative soundscape was spun over sixty magic minutes without interruption. 

Soaring above it all was the didgeridoo playing of Atkins, who surely must rank as one of the nation’s consummate virtuosos. Moving between three instruments of differing lengths, he conjured up the nocturnal snuffling of animals, the rumbling of alien spirits, stutters and mesmerising beats. You could almost see a procession of forms weaving between pinpricks of coloured lights and pockets of deep shadow on the dimly lit stage.

The show has the hallmarks of an Australian bush classic –  spoken word delivered with the emphatic lilt and heavy silences of a bush yarn session around a campfire. The story emerges like tangled roots from the earth, forms like miasma before ones’ eyes and then dissipates into the dark. One night only, just like this Tura exclusive for Perth.

Fittingly, Mungangga Garlagula had its debut last November in Albany, in the Menang Indigenous south-west region where Atkins’ childhood included “sitting around the fire listening to stories with my family, relatives and friends.”   Then it had a celebrated season at this year’s Canberra International Music Festival, but the show has also benefitted from a careful five-year process that typifies Tura’s slow nurturing of important talent.

The narrative emerges in poem-like clusters of words uttered by Atkins between sips from his campfire pannikin. The drone of insects gives way to his description of ‘where it all began’, a sleepy little place with a washhouse, a copper, pressed tin ceilings and Christmas trees and tiger snakes out front. 

The sparse words are distilled wisdom from an Akubra-hatted balladeer – life is like a film with cast and crew,  he says, “but I lost the plot.”  Success came along – with excess. 

We are transported to a Queensland cattle station in the 80s, where eerie yellow lights from the alluring but deadly Min Min spirits come close to snuffing him out. “You’re one lucky fella,” an old hand laconically observes. A drunken comedy unfolds when he loses his boots, then his tobacco, to sneaky ‘bastards’ who leave their tracks– until he realises “these bloody tracks are mine!”

The highs and lows of this balladeer’s life are punctuated by a sound track of brilliant trumpet riffs by Scott Tinkler, recorder passages by Genevieve Lacey, percussion by Vanessa Tomlinson, guitar by Stephen Magnusson, and piano by Anthony Pateras. As the only live musician onstage, Veltheim adds violin passages and percussive highlights while the actual spotlight remains on Atkins, his voice and his deep throbbing didg.

This show richly deserves a wide reception within and beyond our borders, as a contemplation of place and connection to Country. “It’s getting dark, I’m lost”, says the gravelly voice in the closing moments. And then comes the sound of ‘tap tap tap’, signalling the arrival of a wise presence that guides him as surely as the land itself. “You’re not lost boy, you’re home.”

Mungangga Garlagula: Yarning by the Fire was a one-night only performance on 11 August 2025 at the Heath Ledger Theatre.

For more information visit:
https://tura.com.au/projects/mungangga-garlagula