A GAP in the tourism industry in Menindee is what inspired Barkindji/Malyangapa man Dave Doyle to create Wontanella Tours.
Mr Doyle said he’d often encourage visitors to Broken Hill to visit the lakes, but they’d usually come back disappointed.
“They’d tell us there wasn’t anything to do out there,” he said. “So we looked at that and thought, let’s fill that gap.”
Wontanella, which means many waters in Barkindji, began as a tourism business, though offers a range of experiences for interested travellers.
“The idea was to do tourism with cultural education and cultural connection to country,” Mr Doyle said.
“As well as something with a bit of cultural flavour to it, just to show a bit of that connection.”
Tours of Barkindji bush medicine, native bush foods and viewing artefacts on country are just some of the experiences offered by Wontanella.
“My people have had a constant presence in our country since megafauna roamed these lands, back to around 45,000 years ago,” Mr Doyle said.
“But according to our oral histories we’ve been here forever, and when you walk with us you will understand why.”
Over the weekend, Mr Doyle and his team, who are all part of the family, catered the Landcare Community Conservation Conversation Camp at Kinchega National Park, their biggest catering job to date.
“The most we’d catered for was about 20 and this was up to 50,” Mr Doyle said. “So it was a huge jump.”
The catering service offered by Mr Doyle and his team offers a taste of local, native bush flavours, as part of the business’s cultural immersion program.
He hopes to be able to offer fine dining experiences on the edge of the lake, though he said without ovens to bake he’s not quite ready to be able to host these events just yet.
“But we can do most things out there,” he said.
The vision moving forward for the business is to be able to bring more of a tourism industry to the Menindee Lakes region, in turn allowing for more industry and employment.
“Our vision is to be able to feed it back out into the community by employment or helping others start their own business and industries if they want to,” Mr Doyle said.
