 The Kwillana dreaming tours was conceived in October 2000. Karen
Jacobs tells us the Kwillina Dreaming story.
“The business came out of an idea that was conceived with someone who was
working in my current role and we were talking about the benefits of an Indigenous
product in this region." (Karen Jacobs, pers. comm. 2004)
Because being such a small region there is a lot of different diversity amongst
the tourism industry that Indigenous Operators could deliver here and for the
five years previous to that I was trying to promote to the community the opportunities
within Indigenous tourism. Something needed to happen or otherwise a non-Indigenous
company or individual was going to commence a tourism operation and part of that
operation would include Indigenous interpretation. They would reap the benefits
from delivering Indigenous cultural heritage information, which in many cases
where this occurs, is purely up to their interpretation and that really worries
me, worries me about Aboriginal cultural interpretation across the country.
Nowadays things have changed quite a bit but that is probably one of my biggest
fears. I never intentionally set out to set up my own business but I thought
through some of these ideas with a couple of business partners and it took quite
a bit to convince the other two that this was an opportunity that was going begging.
Within a month and a half we actually met with a Project Officer from the Office
of Aboriginal Economic Development who had worked on projects previously. It
took us a couple of meetings to sell him the idea and once we sold him the idea
and that we actually knew what we were doing and we knew what we needed to achieve
and what our responsibilities was to achieve those issues he put in 110% support
of our project and somebody assisted us with a Business Plan and a Feasibility
Plan and the funding to go through and write our Business Plan. That was a very
long process it took us 18 months to go through and achieve.
The OAED provided the funding and the Project Officer employed with them put
in the application to OAD to assist us with finance to go through and do those
different studies to determine if there was a market and demand for Indigenous
tourism.
CONTACT:
Ms Karen Jacobs,
Kwillana Dreaming
Mobile: +61 0408845881
Email: karenjacobs@peel.gov.wa.au
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