Kaurna Boomerangs the first Aboriginal ice hockey team, emerging from an Adelaide youth programme in 2005
The Kaurna Boomerangs ice hockey team grew out of the South Australian Ice Factor program for disengaged high school students.
Image courtesy Canada Down Under
The driest state on the driest continent produced an ice hockey team from an unlikely source in Adelaide. The Kaurna Boomerangs were Australia’s first representative Aboriginal ice hockey team. It emerged from the Ice Factor programme started in 2005 to help at-risk students stay in school and out of trouble.
The Boomerangs beat one of North America’s biggest first nations people, the Cree, in a game during a cultural exchange in 2020. In 2023, Desert Ice, a film project inspired by the Boomerangs, was announced to be South Australia’s version of Hollywood classics The Mighty Ducks and Cool Runnings.
A former program member Shaquille Burgoyne, with Jaidyn O’Neil, came up with Kaurna Boomerangs ideas, inspired by the popular 1990s Mighty Ducks films.
Taking their Kaurna name from the traditional owners of the Adelaide plains, the Boomerangs got the chance to stage the first exhibition ice hockey games in 2019 in Darwin at the Arafura Games – a week-long international sporting event for Indigenous representatives from 33 countries. It provided a stepping stone for athletes aspiring to represent their countries.
The Boomerangs team for the Arafura Games included one of its coaches and captain, Jarrad Chester, the first Aboriginal ice hockey player to compete for Australia. The other coach was Justine Shaw, the first Ice Factor kid, whose mother, Marie Shaw QC, started the programme. The South Australian Ice Sports Federation and the Ice Arena at Thebarton helped develop the program with Adelaide metropolitan high schools, starting with advice from Don Anderson a youth worker in alternative education at northern suburbs’ Parafield Gardens High School and a group of disengaged students ages 13 to 18.
A pilot project led to the Ice Factor Program using ice hockey as a vehicle to develop a team and long-term life skills. By 2019, 15 high schools were involved in the program aimed at youth at risk, because of absenteeism, behaviour or literacy problems. An average of 200 at-risk youths took part weekly representing their school teams during school terms. Schools used the programme for their students to achieve a South Australian Certificate of Education unit in community studies.
