Mai Fali Eh!: Songs and Stories of Timor-Leste

2025 marks 50 years since the first Timorese refugees fled their homeland in the face of invasion, arriving in Australia in December 1975. While a quietly resilient community is celebrating survival and achievements this anniversary, The Boite joins the celebrations through music and story-telling.

Named after the well known Tetum children’s song, Mai Fali Eh! (Come Back Again), in which a mother calls her children home at sunset, the concert brings together over 700+ children across Victoria singing a mixed repertoire of traditional and contemporary pieces in Tetum and English originally developed by leading Timorese singer and songwriter, Ego Lemos with Australian musician, Andrea Khoza.

Central to the performance is the telling of The Crocodile Story – an origin story of East Timor, about a legendary crocodile named Lafaek Diak, whose friendship with a human boy was so deep that when Diak died the ridges on his back became the mountains of Timor-Leste.