6NME 100.9FM NOONGAR RADIO CELEBRATES TEN YEARS OF BROADCASTING IN OPENING NAIDOC WEEK

On July 5, 2009 the solid sounds of 6NME 100.9FM Noongar Radio Perth broadcast for the first time from NAIDOC Week.

Ten years on, Noongar Radio celebrated the tenth anniversary of 6NME, with their first voice and long-time favourite Jeremy Garlett (pictured above left with Program Manager Jeff Michael at Wandoo Rehabilitation Prison) returning to kick off NAIDOC Week with Noongar Radio’s #NR10 #Kaya Wandjoo Festival.

The name was chosen by Garlett from Noongar Radio to warmly welcome everyone to support their local Noongar community and to take part in the festival. With the theme of ‘Voice. Treaty. Truth.’ Noongar Radio broadcast more and wider voices than ever before.

Over NAIDOC Week, Noongar Radio broadcast 35 hours live, everywhere from schools and hospitals to behind bars in one of the country’s most innovative prisons and NAIDOC Week Opening Ceremonies for the first time from both Perth and Fremantle.

Headlined by the Phil Bartlett Band and produced by Phil Walleystack’s production company Aboriginal Shows and Productions, #NR10 featured the Madjitil Moorna Choir (below left),  ‘the black Elvis’ Reno James (centre), Yabu Band’s Delly Stokes (right), the award-winning Natasha Eldridge, Jake and the Cowboys, internationally acclaimed Phil Walleystack, poet Cyndy Moody and Fred Penny closing the show with an old favourite familiar to Noongar Radio’s listeners, “Too Solid.”

Noongar Radio was launched in 2009 with the slogan “Sounds Solid.”

Supported by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peedac and the City of Vincent, Mayor Emma Cole said “We are delighted to be working with Noongar Radio on the Kaya Wandjoo Festival this year to celebrate Noongar culture, history, art, food and music.”

On launching the City’s Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan at #NR10 Mayor Cole went on to say “We are always striving to grow our knowledge of Noongar culture and to share this with our local community.”

Noongar Radio was especially proud to deliver live to the community concurrent Opening Ceremonies from Fremantle and Perth. A challenge in logistics, the broadcast required three teams of broadcasters and technicians. Coordinated and anchored from the city’s studios, Noongar Radio crossed live to their outside broadcast teams based in both Perth’s Supreme Court Gardens and Fremantle’s PCYC.

Now a veteran broadcaster, Garlett described the atmosphere as “celebratory.

“People were talking about the theme, Voice. Treaty. Truth. This is what Noongar Radio is all about, engaging with the community.”

NAIDOC Week events were broadcast from North Perth, Rockingham, Hamilton Hill’s Port School, SMYL, Supreme Court Gardens in the Perth CBD, Fremantle PCYC, Mirrabooka, Ashfield, Armadale Hospital and Wandoo, Western Australia’s first dedicated alcohol and drug rehabilitation prison for women where residents were allowed the opportunity of voicing their own shout-outs.

NAIDOC Week’s Outside Broadcasts were produced by Noongar Radio’s small family of four staff and mob of dedicated volunteers – and it’s not over yet! NAIDOC celebrations continue in August with live broadcasts from Fiona Stanley Hospital and Edmond Rice College, Bindoon.