You may have noticed a lack of blog posts over the last week and the reason is that our whole editorial team has been away. For the last few years, we've been fascinated by a small tribal Aboriginal town in the Northern Territory, about six hours drive south west of Darwin, called Wadeye and so finally, last Wednesday, we packed seven cameras and five cans of insect repellent and headed north to find out what the place was like for ourselves. What we found blew our minds.Wadeye was established by Catholic missionaries in the 30s to house a number of different Aboriginal tribes and impose on them the word of God. Today there are around 3,000 people living there, making up around fifteen different tribes, but what's most insane and amazing about Wadeye is that the whole town is completely obsessed with music, most specifically heavy metal music. Every single building in town is literally covered with graffiti of the names of different metal bands, at sundown metal blares from homes everywhere and even at church, mothers and their children wear metal t-shirts.Taking it even further, the different tribes of the town have named their mobs (extended family groups) after their favourite bands so you have, among others, the Slayer mob, the Judas Priest Boys, the White Lions and the Evil Warrior Boys and although things between the gangs appear civil now, it hasn't always been the case.Over the course of our week in Wadeye, we were amazed by the friendliness and curiosity of the people; they took us hunting (we got a wallaby) and invited us to their parties and what we realised is that, despite everything else, most of them simply genuinely love the music. We'll be showing the the full trip on vbs.tv as soon as we're done editing.
