An Emergency Warning level is in place for Segenhoe, in the Upper Hunter area of NSW. Keep up to date withParticipants in a Malgana language workshop, some as young as five or six, are learning how to pronounce new words.
"When I was young I asked my mum to teach me language and Mum said, 'I can't teach you because I'm not allowed to','' Mr Dorey says. Facilitator Kym Oakley's great-grandmother was one of the last fluent speakers of the Malgana language, and there are recordings of her and other elders speaking it. "So once I got over that initial shock of hearing her, because she had passed three years beforehand, so to hear her voice again was a little bit confronting, but I knew that I had to push through it to hear exactly how to say the words correctly," she says.
Local resident Pat Oakley started learning the language, along with her family, several years ago and used it to perform a song, written by her brother, commemorating Shark Bay's history. "It's a part of our culture, it's embedded through everything that we do, when sit and we look around here in this beautiful country."