Members of St Paul’s Lutheran Church Choir Shepparton in Victoria have seen the extremes of Australia’s climate in recent months. The choir’s members, who are originally from African nations including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and South Sudan, left the flooding Goulburn Valley where they live to head for the dusty outback of Central Australia. There the choir, which sings in Kiswahili, Kirundi and English, collaborated with fellow Lutherans from the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir at the 10-day Desert Song Festival in and around Alice Springs. The Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir, whose members are from Hermannsburg and other remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, sing in English, Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara, and will tour Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this month.
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