It was exactly the question Dinawan Dyirribang had been hoping to hear at Saturday’s Bathurst Bicentenary Colonial Fair.

Before you even set foot in the Wiradyuri camp on the bank of the Macquarie River, it looked inviting.

Unlike the rest of the fair, it was quiet. People milled around logs burning on the campfire and the smell of cooking meat wafted over the river and compelled people to find out more.

Mr Dyirribang, a Wiradyuri elder, said there were a number of reasons why it was vital they took part in the bicentenary fair, but the most important was so people could learn from each other.

Years ago, when Mr Dyirribang  was at school, he said Australian history was taught through “white eyes”, it was simply as if Aboriginal people did not exist.

“I used to say to my teacher ‘what about us’?” he said.

“How can you discover something when there’s someone else already there?

“There wasn’t even a mention of Aboriginal people. People only hear one side with all the history of Australia, they don’t hear it from our point of view.”

Mr Dyirribang was joined at the camp by Torres Strait elder Phil Ahwang, who said it was important to lend his support.

“Things are getting better and what happened today [Saturday] was a turning point because they came down to us,” he said of fairgoers’ interest in the Wiradyuri camp.

Mr Dyirribang is hopeful that the meeting and gathering place set up for the fair will remain long into the future for not only local Wiradyuri people, but the wider community.

“It’s to get an understanding of what it means and what we stand for ... it’s also for teaching our culture,” he said.

“We’ll start teaching our people and anyone else that wants to learn about our culture.”

These days Mr Dyirribang said things have greatly improved and, while there are still two cultures, European and Aboriginal, he firmly believes the more they know about each other the better things will become.

For Mr Dyirribang, that wish was realised while he was talking to the Western Advocate on Saturday when a white man, along with this wife and children, interrupted the interview to ask a simple question: “Excuse me, can you tell me a little more about this?”