Mitchelton Library
Brett Leavy descends from the Kooma people, whose Country runs from St George in the east to Cunnamulla in the west, north to Mitchell, and south to the New South Wales border, with the town of Bollon at its centre. Born in Sydney, he holds his Country in south-west Queensland, where the Federal Court recognised Kooma native title in 2014. His mother had to leave school in grade four to work on a cattle property, and she raised her children to prize the education she was denied.
In 1987 he won the national Under-20 200-metre title and played in the Junior Wallabies side that beat New Zealand. He then taught high-school history and geography at Boonah before Indigenous media claimed him: first the Townsville Indigenous Media Association, then the National Indigenous Radio Service, where as General Manager he oversaw a network that grew past 120 community stations, and where he was among those who pressed for the national Indigenous television service that became NITV.
In 1998 he founded CyberDreaming. Working with the Wakka Wakka and Kabi Kabi artist Vincent Serico, his team built Serico’s World, one of Australia’s first 3D game-engine simulations of Aboriginal Country, with Serico’s own paintings as doorways into his oral history. That work grew into Bilbie XR Labs and Virtual Songlines, a growing set of navigable 3D reconstructions of Australian places before colonisation, which he calls an Indijiverse and describes as a virtual time machine for walking in the footsteps of the ancestors. Visitors have walked through it at the Australian National Maritime Museum, ACMI in Melbourne, Yagan Square in Perth, Brisbane’s Cross River Rail Experience Centre, and the Daejeon Museum of Art in South Korea.
At dawn on 26 January 2024 his portraits of Nanbarry, Barangaroo, Pemulwuy, and Patyegarang, titled Trailblazers and made with the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, lit the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Griffith University honoured him with a 2023 Alumni Award, and in April 2025 he addressed a plenary session of the International Federation of Surveyors’ Working Week in Brisbane on the Virtual Songlines Digital Twin.
On Sunday 4 October 2026, Brett Leavy speaks about Virtual Songlines: rebuilding Country before colonisation in digital form, what such a record can hold, and who holds it. We invite you to join us to hear and question this Kooma storyteller and technologist.
Brett follows a strong line of speakers. Since March 2024, Elders and Cultural Custodians, historians, authors, and community leaders have stood where he will stand.
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