Cover Image: Artist Fleur Schell with her fantastical Wheatwhale, a centrepiece of Biosphere Boodjar, which blends art, community, and country in the Wheatbelt.

Just a 90-minute drive north-east of Perth on the edge of the Avon Valley, you may spot a whale cavorting through the wind-tousled waves of wheat at Goomalling. 

Unlike the magnificent mammals making spectacles of themselves in our western waters, this cetacean creation is animated by the energy and imaginations of the many local children who gave it life.  

The Wheat Whale and another large articulated puppet creature, the Koomal (Goomal), or brushtail possum that gave Goomalling its name, play leadingroles in the inaugural Biosphere Boodja Arts & Wild Things Festival over the Kings Birthday weekend.  

The children that made them will participate in a dusk parade of totemic puppets and animal lanterns, culminating in a spectacular light-art show Totem Story projected on two of the town’s distinctive grain domes, known as the Dolly Twins.  

It’s the Dolly Twins you see first as you head towards Goomalling, a small town of just 600-odd people in the heart of Ballardong Noongar country. The four gigantic domes rise surreally from the landscape as if plonked there from Pine Gap or an imperial outpost in Star Wars: Andor. 

Dolly Parton must have come to mind for some local wit when they were built to store the district’s wheat harvest for CBH back in 1994. The nickname soon stuck to the white 40m-diameter concrete hemispheres that loom over Goomalling’s main street. 

“They’re one of the few man-made structures around here you can see from space,” says Fleur Schell, a leading ceramic artist and creative director of Biosphere Boodja Arts & Wild Things Festival.  

For Schell, the domes are gigantic curvaceous canvases ripe for the imaginative mind to run wild. “With their visibility and accessibility, we realised what a powerful story-telling device these things are,” she says. 

Schell is collaborating with local elder and Ballardong Aboriginal Corporation chair Tracey de Grussa, who has narrated a powerful creation story with projections by artist Steven Alyian, who helped bring Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak to life in Kings Park for Perth Festival and EverNow.  

The koomal/possum, a totem animal for De Grussa, and the wheat whale are transformed from puppets at the base of the domes into dazzling light projections, flying up onto the grain domes as Vivid Festival-style light paintings. 

Other events over the Biosphere Boodja weekend include a Noongar-language choir, clay-play tent, live music, workshops and markets, ballooning and Australia’s first crop circle exhibition showcasing the work of 12 clay artists and sculptors. 

Goomalling is in the heart of WA’s clay country, where a billion years of granite erosion from the nearby Darling Scarp has created claypans rich in kaolin, the main ingredient in porcelain. Clay has been extracted here for tens of thousands of years by Ballardong Noongar people and more recently also for brickmaking, sculpture, pottery and fine ceramics. 

It’s one reason why Biosphere Boodja is a precursor sister event to the country’s top ceramic event, Wedge 2025, The Australian Ceramics Triennale, being held for the first time in WA in Fremantle from 2 – 5 October.  

Schell is a renowned Fremantle-based ceramic artist with an international profile but with a back story grounded in Goomalling. The Wheat Whale first surfaced as Schell’s imaginary childhood friend moving through the wind-rippling wheatfield as she played in the wet clay of the dam on her parent’s farm outside town. 

Schell says Biosphere Boodja is an example of how small towns can spark big change to “walk more gently, with creativity, curiosity, and care”. The event not only builds community connections as people rally together to do something extraordinary; it showcases the Wheatbelt during the glorious wildflower season and seeks to “build a habitat in our imagination” to care more for the natural world and its threatened species.  

Biosphere Boodja Arts & Wild Things Festival is in Goomalling from Sunday 28 September to Monday 29 September. Entry is free but registrations required: https://www.biosphereboodja.com/ 

The Australian Ceramic Triennale is at Fremantle Arts Centre and other Fremantle venues from 2-5 October. Details https://www.australianceramicstriennale.com.au/