As a child, Mark Atkins felt like he lived on the fence, taking on both sides of his Black and white heritage.
The son of an Irish father and an Indigenous Australian mother, Atkins grew up deliberately separated from his Indigenous mob.
Sitting around a campfire and listening to stories is the way Atkins developed a true connection to his roots, on both sides of his lineage.
"I took both sides on board anyway, the Black and the white, and the stories coming from the Black and the white," he said.
"It was just that time and both sides of the fence as well, we'd sit by the fire and there'd be stories told around that fire.
"So that's where it all began for me."
After a successful decades-long career, the didgeridoo musician and his Finnish-Australian collaborator Erkki Veltheim are bringing campfire storytelling to the Sydney Opera House with their project Mungangga Garlagula.
Audiences will experience poetic narratives accompanied by a musical dreamscape, featuring Atkins' didgeridoo playing, in the country's most emblematic theatre.
"We're trying to create a very nocturnal experience where the logic of the everyday disappears, and a new logic - both in the text and the sound - takes over," Veltheim said
"If people come out of it feeling they've dreamt this incredible dream, and have a little bit of a new perspective on Australia, on the bush, on these mythological figures, I think we've really achieved something."
Atkins and Veltheim, a violinist, have been longtime touring companions, who devised this imaginative project on the road years ago.
"And then, bloody COVID happened," Atkins said.
"When I think back on it, it was such an inconvenience right across the board, but with a lot of us artists suddenly found a time to write material."
It also presented Veltheim with the challenge of recording and mixing all of the music ahead of time to create an electronic soundscape for the performance.
"I've been very interested in experimental music and electro-acoustic music throughout my career," the Finland-born musician said.
"I wanted to find ways that we could stretch the sound world or expand the sound world beyond what people would usually associate with something like the didgeridoo or with traditional storytelling.
"So the roots of this music go back, 60, 80, 90 thousand years, but there's always flexibility to add stories about the present world."
Mungangga Garlagula will play at the Sydney Opera House from June 26-27.
Australian Associated Press