When Butchulla song man Fred Leone brings out the first ever yidaki (didgeridoo) to grace the Eurovision stage in Malmö, in the early hours of Wednesday in Australia, a party of Garrwa and Butchulla tribal families will be watching live from his home town of Hervey Bay, south-east Queensland.
“All the local elders and families are getting together to have a big Eurovision party back home. They’ve been telling me, ‘We’ll be watching, we’ll be cheering you on’,” Leone says. Even in Malmö, it feels “surreal” to be playing at the world’s biggest song contest.
