Synopsis

Ringbalin - Breaking the Drought documents the healing of Australia’s greatest river through an ancient ceremony of culture and spirit.

This story starts in 2010 during Australia’s worst drought in history. The Murray Darling River was dying. A group of Aboriginal nations united to try to save the river and the life that relied on it by performing the traditional Ringbalin ceremony. By the time they had finished dancing, the rain was falling, and what followed were the biggest floods on record.

The film is complemented by Ringbalin - River Stories, a content rich smartphone/tablet app which contains 48 three-minute films in which aboriginal Elders of the nations along the Murray River welcome visitors and tell stories about their country.

The stories are geo-located by GPS coordinates, and push notifications will let you know when you're close to the site of a story. This means that once the app is downloaded you don’t need to worry about not having network coverage, because the app has all the information you need to unlock the Ringbalin - River Stories.

Hand-painted maps will show you the way, and you can watch the Elders tell their stories as you sit beside the river where they were filmed.

This multi-platform documentary will lay a map of living Aboriginal culture, knowledge and stories across the real world, and along the length of Australia's greatest rivers, the Murray Darling.