Ngana Barangarai Project

In 2012 Aunty Barbara Nicholson was accompanied by writers Bruce Pascoe, John Muk Muk Burke and Simon Luckhurst to run writing workshops with inmates at Junee Correctional Centre. Organised by the South Coast Writers Centre and with the support of GeoCorp Australia, who run the jail, the resulting small collection of writing, Dreaming Inside, inspired the creation of the Black Wallaby Writers’ Group.

Aunty Barbara returned to the jail in subsequent years with a shifting group of accompanying writers and writing teachers. Since that first visit, more than 200 individual inmates have created more than 700 pieces of writing, including poems, song lyrics, biographical material, philosophical observations and more. Now known as Ngana Barangarai, which means Black Wallaby, the project has received support from Wollongong University, RMIT University and Create NSW.

In 2023 the 11th volume of the Dreaming Inside anthology was published, alongside an anthology from Dilwynia Women’s Correctional Centre Sista’s Green Sea Dreaming. Each new volume of Dreaming Inside is launched at Wollongong Art Gallery as part of the Sydney Writers Festival satellite program.

Aunty Barbara says, “These works should be required reading for everyone in the welfare, legal and judicial professions, from police, to lawyers, to prosecutors, to judges, to ministers and commissioners for Corrective Services, and to all prison personnel, social workers, chaplains, educators and other service providers.”  She adds, ‘The material in the books cover love and yearning for family, government policies and the impact of them on families across generations, issues of justice and child removal, and there is heartache and remorse for causing pain to loved ones. There is a clear desire and a clear resolution to shake off the past and forge a brighter future. A number of writers focus on Dreaming stories and cultural references abound.”

Dr. Aunty Barbara Nicholson is the project director of the Ngana Barangarai Project and Black Wallaby Writers’. She is the Chief Editor of 11 Dreaming Inside: Voices from Junee Correctional Centre anthologies. She is a Wadi Wadi woman, a respected elder, a poet, an activist, a published academic and university lecturer, and a recipient of numerous awards in Aboriginal Education. She holds a degree in English Literature (Newcastle) and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws (UOW).

Read more:

After a decade of Dreaming Inside, Aunty Barbara shifts focus for Sista's Green Sea Dreaming

This beloved Wadi Wadi Elder is helping mob in prison become published authors

The Wadi Wadi Elder bringing out stories from the inside

Unique prison writing program provides voice for Indigenous men