Wild horses roaming the streets, grazing on kerbside grass or being ridden bareback by young people is a familiar sight around the Far North Queensland Aboriginal community of Yarrabah.
Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council estimates about 200 horses roam freely in the shire that sits on the coast, about 40 kilometres east of Cairns.
Wandering horses can pose a range of safety risks, particularly to traffic, but it's a potential health hazard that is the focus of a new campaign.
Yarrabah also has a large flying fox population and the potential for interaction between horses and bats could pose a problem in the form of the deadly Hendra virus.
Hendra henipavirus, known as Hendra virus, can be transmitted to horses from bats, and from horses to humans.
It has killed four of the seven people infected in Australia since it was first detected in 1994.
Creative approach to combat potentially deadly disease
In response to a call-out from the council's environmental health team for Hendra virus educational resources, Charles Sturt University student Bernard Higgins created a high-tech animated video as part of his creative arts studies.
The Indigenous creative says he's determined to utilise his talents to help others.
"As a Wiradjuri man, I wanted to explore how to use my skills and knowledge to help First Nations communities," Mr Higgins said.
"Designing animal health communication is one area where there's a gap in our knowledge."
He is hopeful that the animation, created through significant engagement with the community and health bodies, will help make an important health message more relatable.
"The layperson can get bogged down with all the jargon. We saw that with COVID — we got bombarded with so much information," Mr Higgins said.
"At a community level, by putting together [a short] animation, which has all the pertinent information, it's not as intimidating as a government-made brochure."
The animation also features imagery from the Yarrabah community. Mr Higgins was able to capture the vision during four field trips from Wagga Wagga for his research.
He hopes that the visual connection will also help make the message "hit home" and provide a sense of ownership to the video.
"When a young person watches they can say: 'That's my community. It's not some random place and we're talking about issues that directly affect me,'" Mr Higgins said.
"If they're watching and see it's a sick horse where they're living, or they think that it looks like the street where their friends live and they see a sick horse, they'll hopefully now know what they should do."
Utilising film and gamer technology
Mr Higgins created the animation with the same technology used in some of the world's best-known video games and movies.
"Some of the processes I use to make the animation is what James Cameron's using for Avatar — that virtual production and motion capture [technology]," he said.
"I used software called Unreal Engine. That's a game engine which has been used for video games like Fortnite.
"I pretty much made a game level of Yarrabah by setting up cameras. So I've built a version of Yarrabah where you can walk around it in virtual reality."
Mr Higgins also built characters and animated them by working with an actor in a motion-capture suit.
The high-tech project was a painstaking process both from a creative and culturally consultative point of view.
Mr Higgins says the investment of time shows his level of commitment to keeping the Yarrabah community safe and healthy.
"When we say Hendra is a serious illness, and that we want to make sure that no one gets it, we're actually prepared to put serious resources into it," he said.
"This is a serious project with serious resources and information … and working with the First Nations community we're also taking the cultural stuff seriously too."
The project also involved the University of Sydney, the University of Wollongong and Queensland Health.
