Wahluu Racing Team honours the Wiradyuri name of traditional male initiation site, Wahluu, and represents a major collaboration between the Bathurst Wiradyuri Elders, the NSW Department of Education’s videoconference hub DART Connections, project co-ordinators The Project Zone, and industry representatives from graphic design, cultural tourism, catering and media.

The project introduced students to vocations aligned with motor racing, encouraging them to sample a range of career directions through hands-on workshops with industry experts, with the project’s hope that one or more will resonate with their individual talents and interests.

These experts shared their knowledge, experience and technique, allowing the students to create project content by interpreting Wiradyuri cultural knowledge shared by Wiradyuri Elders Dinawan Dyirribang (Uncle Bill Allen) and Aunty Leanna Carr-Smith. 

This information, including background to the initiation ceremonies performed on the mountain, their significance to the Wiradyuri people, and totems common to the Central West area, allowed the students to develop ‘racing livery’ for their own virtual race-car in simulated motor racing on the Mount Panorama/Wahluu racetrack.

When completed, this distinctive livery will identify each individual student’s race-car. Students ‘earn’ time racing on the simulator through attendance and participation in the program, with each participating high school hosting a networked simulator, allowing student teams to race each other.

While the project is currently being piloted at Bathurst and Kelso High schools, there are plans to roll out to other high schools in the Wiradyuri nation footprint, with a focus on the significant cultural landmarks in their specific area.

Activities have included the race-car livery creation process, with students identifying a totem animal to develop as their proof of concept, learning traditional Wiradyuri painting techniques using paint and ochre (Aunty Leanna), and graphic design principles with Marg Hogan of Red Moon Designs, creator of the original, iconic Mount Panorama Racetrack sign.

Another popular take-up was catering, with students learning cooking technique and ingredient use for exciting finger-food fusions using traditional bush ingredients.

Mentored by the chefs from Indigenous Cultural Adventures, Orange, student-created delicacies were devoured with zero leftovers. Despite ingredients including kangaroo, crocodile and emu, which most students had never tasted and found challenging at first, there was still none left.

Ian Redpath of Bathurst One Day Tours discussed the burgeoning Aboriginal cultural tourism market and identified a number of areas in and around Wahluu and the Central West with potential for development as cultural tourism destinations.

The five-week program’s workshop content was documented with professional camera equipment by students interested in media, to be showcased at Artstate 2018 on November 2, hosted at Gunthers Lane Cafe, Russell Street, Bathurst.

The display will also include students’ car liveries (proof of concept to rough drafts to final liveries), a demonstration of the racing car simulator that forms the central ‘carrot’ in the Wahluu Racing Team program, samples of the finger-food created and cooked by the students, and a panel discussion by Uncles Bill Allen and Brian Grant, and Aunty Leanna Carr-Smith regarding the cultural implications of the racetrack on the mountain (co-named Mount Panorama/Wahluu in 2014).