Every year, indigenous people from all over Australia come together at the Dreaming festival, here at Woodford on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. They're joined by indigenous groups from around the world to celebrate the survival of the oldest cultures on earth.

Tania Nugent: The Dreaming begins in the traditional way of the oldest living and adapting culture on earth, Australia's Aboriginal people - a welcome to country, from the traditional custodians of the land. At Woodford it's the Jinibara people.

Rhoda Roberts, Festival director: A welcome to country can be done in so many ways. It can be sung up, it can be danced up, it can be spoken, it can be a ritual, it can be smoked. It's protocol. It's honouring the nation you're going into, seeking permission, doing the right thing by custodians, honouring ancient creation spirit and so forth. It's connecting to country. This is our place.

Tania Nugent: Over 4 nights and three days, the spirits smile over Woodford. There is music and dance, theatre and stories and this incredible showcase of the diversity of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.

Rhoda Roberts: We have over 300 language groups or nations and of course amongst them it's further divided into clan groups with various dialects. Australia is such a different country from north, south, east and west - that geography affects who we are and how we operate. Often people will see an image of an Aboriginal person and sort of assume that we're all the same and in fact we're very, very different, but our ceremonies, our protocols, our respect is very similar.

Tania Nugent: From the Torres strait islands, between the mainland and Papua New Guinea, come the other indigenous group of Australia.

Rhoda Roberts: They have a very unique and different culture and in fact the more you go closer to PNG such as Saibai you see very much the influences of Papua New Guinea and Sabai.