Perth festival opens with an exquisite million-dollar spectacle – and an urgent warning

In the open-air spectacular Boorna Waanginy, scientists, botanists and school children came together with Noongar elders to deliver a powerful messageThe stories play out above and around us: vast, full-colour 3D projections that dance across towering gum trees as we walk among them. Shadows of birds – hundreds of them – fly across the canopy, squawks swarming in surround sound. A serpent the size of 15 trees slithers from my left to my right, and 20-foot-tall numbats scurry and flic