Est. 2014

Kar­rke is the Abo­rig­i­nal name, in the Aran­da lan­guage, for the west­ern Bower­bird. This bird can be found in this area of Watar­rka (Kings Canyon Nation­al Park) and Cen­tral Aus­tralia. The male bird with its pink plume on the top of his head dec­o­rates its bow­er with berries, flow­ers and shiny things to attract a female bird. By choos­ing this bird for our busi­ness we thought about how it can fly away with our vis­i­tors to share their expe­ri­ences with their friends to attract them to the area of WATARRKA.

Kar­rke is owned and oper­at­ed by Chris­tine Bread­en and Peter Abbott who live on their ances­tor’s land a small Abo­rig­i­nal Com­mu­ni­ty called Wan­mar­ra. Wan­mar­ra is a small com­mu­ni­ty with a pop­u­la­tion of just 10. We estab­lished Kar­rke to pre­serve and main­tain our Lurit­ja and Per­tame (South­ern Aran­da) lan­guage, cul­tur­al knowl­edge and her­itage for the future of our younger gen­er­a­tions to nev­er for­get their culture.

Our 1 hour Abo­rig­i­nal Cul­tur­al tour is avail­able 01 Feb­ru­ary to 31 Octo­ber from Wednes­day to Sun­day. Offer­ing our vis­i­tors 4 tour times dai­ly start­ing from 9am, 10:30am and 2:00pm, 4:00pm.

Peter Abbott

Peter is a West­ern Aranda/​Pertame (South­ern Aran­da) man from Cen­tral Aus­tralia region. Peter is your host and expe­ri­enced cul­tur­al tour guide who loves to share his cul­tur­al knowl­edge in gen­er­al to all guests and vis­i­tors who vis­it, live and work in this area of Watar­rka Nation­al Park. 

Pri­or to start­ing the busi­ness with his part­ner Chris­tine the only source of income for them was receiv­ing a gov­ern­ment ben­e­fit (i.e. Cen­tre­link pay­ment), fac­ing many chal­lenges of liv­ing remote­ly on coun­try, they thought on how they can bet­ter their lives by stay­ing on coun­try and earn an income from it. Peter and Chris­tine then thought of doing a cul­tur­al tourism busi­ness. With a lot of plan­ning and talk­ing with indus­try and gov­ern­ment bod­ies they began putting aside some monies to make up enough for the reg­is­tra­tion of a business. 

Peter, says its great to share my cul­ture in gen­er­al, the more knowl­edge and the infor­ma­tion of this amaz­ing area that we live in I want to share it and that can be empow­er­ing to all vis­i­tors as well as my fam­i­ly they can see the awe­some­ness in it. We have the tour now but many more expe­ri­ences is yet to come from Karrke.” 

Chris­tine Breaden

Chris­tine Bread­en is a Lurit­ja women and tra­di­tion­al own­er of the Wan­mar­ra Com­mu­ni­ty. Chris­tine is also your host and expe­ri­enced cul­tur­al tour guide who is pas­sion­ate about shar­ing her cul­ture to every­one who vis­its her tra­di­tion­al lands in the Watar­rka (Kings Canyon Nation­al Park) area. Chris­tine is also a mul­ti tal­ent­ed artist in dot paint­ing art form, wood­en arte­fact mak­ing and tra­di­tion­al brand­ing tech­niques which she shares on the tour expe­ri­ences. Chris­tine says, ​“Peter and I have our own busi­ness, we oper­at­ing it, its good for us and my com­mu­ni­ty I want to teach our young ones the tourism busi­ness to empow­er them so they can take it on in the future. That’s why Peter and I doing this business.”