How paddleboarding is reviving a dying language

The millennia-old language of Gumbaynggirr was critically endangered. Now, a series of tourism initiatives are helping to bring it back from the brink of disappearance.

I stepped into the cool salt water, wading through the shallows of Moonee Creek on Australia's eastern coast. Overhead, rainbow lorikeets chattered in the eucalyptus trees while red dragonflies buzzed past. I was in the heart of Gumbaynggirr Country, an Aboriginal nation spanning roughly 6,000 sq km between the Clarence and Nambucca rivers in New South Wales (NSW). 

"We're the first paddleboarders in the world," said our Gumbaynggirr cultural guide, Troy Robinson. "We're only doing what our old ancestors have done since time immemorial." As the tour's three other participants and I struggled to steady ourselves on our foam boards, Robinson glided along the mangroves lining the banks of his ancestral land, dreadlocks spilling from beneath his Akubra hat.

I followed his lead, making long strokes with my paddle as schools of small, almost translucent mullet darted beneath my board and aquatic insects flitted across the creek's surface. Robinson, who had smeared white ochre across his cheeks and forearms, explained that his people have traditionally used the paste as a natural sunscreen. I told him I was imagining his ancestors paddling alongside us, curious about the blue foam SUPs and plastic paddles. "They would've carved their vessels out of the trees though," he said, laughing.

After an 8.5-hour overnight train from Sydney to Coffs Harbour, I'd sought out Wajaana Yaam Adventure Tours to paddle with purpose. The Gumbaynggirr-owned outfitter not only offers travellers the chance to experience a sliver of Australia through the eyes of its original residents, it also directs a portion of its proceeds towards revitalising their community's endangered millennia-old language.

The return of a lost language

Before Britain began colonising Australian in 1788, the continent was home to more than 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, with more than 800 dialects between them. Gumbaynggirr, whose origins are believed to stretch back thousands of years, is one of them.

In 1909, the NSW state government forcefully relocated many Aboriginal people from their traditional lands onto reserves and missions, where they were forbidden from practising their culture or speaking their language. As a result, by 2019, just 120 Aboriginal languages remained across the nation, and 90% of those were threatened with extinction.

"We don't truly know ourselves if we don't know our language and we don't speak our language," said Clark Webb, a Gumbaynggirr cultural leader and Wajaana Yaam's founder. "For a time, our language was… officially listed as critically endangered."

According to the National Indigenous Languages Survey, by the early 2000s, only 30-50 Gumbaynggirr speakers remained – none of whom were children. In response, Webb developed three local tourism experiences under the Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation (BMNAC), whose profits were to be reinvested into Gumbaynggirr language revitalisation programmes – including NSW's first Indigenous bilingual school, which opened in 2022. "We're still endangered, but I feel like we've lifted out of the critically endangered scenario," he said. 

Now with more than 100 students enrolled between the ages of five and 15, the school has........

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