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Nyarruri (Canning Stock Route Well 32)
“Nyarruri, Well 32. My Father’s birthplace.”
– Janelle Booth
Nyarruri is a soak and nearby well on the Canning Stock Route, south west of Kunawarritji Aboriginal community. In 1906, Nyarruri, like Kunawarritji, was absorbed into the Canning Stock Route. This site lies within Janelle’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her father.
The Western Desert term ‘ngurra’ is hugely versatile in application. Broadly denoting birthplace and belonging, ngurra can refer to a body of water, a camp site, a large area of Country, or even a modern house. People identify with their ngurra in terms of specific rights and responsibilities, and the possession of intimate knowledge of the physical and cultural properties of one’s Country. This knowledge is traditionally passed intergenerationally through family connections. Painting ngurra, and in so doing sharing the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories and physical characteristics of that place, has today become an important means of cultural maintenance. Physical maintenance of one’s ngurra, like cultural maintenance, ensures a site’s wellbeing, and is a responsibility of the people belonging to that area.
The intersection of the Canning Stock Route with Nyarruri made this a site of early contact with Europeans for many Martu then living a pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) life in the desert. Following the route’s construction, Martu encountered Europeans and other Martu working as cattle drovers as they would travel up and down the Stock Route from water source to water source. Increasingly, pujimanpa (desert dwellers) followed the route to newly established ration depots, mission and pastoral stations. They were drawn to the route in search of food, by a sense of curiosity, or by loneliness. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, most of the desert family groups had left the desert. Eventually, these factors combined with an extreme and prolonged drought in the 1960s to prompt the few remaining pujimanpa to move in from the desert.
