August 2022

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Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs)

This design tells the story of Elizabeth’s homeland – a dreaming place, a good dreaming place with plenty of Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs). Elizabeth’s homeland lies east of Maningrida, at the mouth of Blyth river. This country is known for a large spiritual mud crab, which lives in the area.

Many families go and collect crabs to eat there with long sticks, or collect directly from the shores. Mud crabs hide in the muddy bottoms of estuaries and mangrove forests in areas surrounding Maningrida. After a king tide, a large cyclical tide which bring the crabs out from the mangroves, it is a good time to find crabs.

Barnkabarra (mud crabs) in Kuninjku language, or Rrugurrgurda (mud crabs) in the Burarra language, are good baladji (bush food in Burarra) and can be caught all year round. They are put on the fire to cook and they are ready when they turn a bright orange colour.

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Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs)

This design tells the story of Elizabeth’s homeland – a dreaming place, a good dreaming place with plenty of Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs). Elizabeth’s homeland lies east of Maningrida, at the mouth of Blyth river. This country is known for a large spiritual mud crab, which lives in the area.

Many families go and collect crabs to eat there with long sticks, or collect directly from the shores. Mud crabs hide in the muddy bottoms of estuaries and mangrove forests in areas surrounding Maningrida. After a king tide, a large cyclical tide which bring the crabs out from the mangroves, it is a good time to find crabs.

Barnkabarra (mud crabs) in Kuninjku language, or Rrugurrgurda (mud crabs) in the Burarra language, are good baladji (bush food in Burarra) and can be caught all year round. They are put on the fire to cook and they are ready when they turn a bright orange colour.

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Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs)

This design tells the story of Elizabeth’s homeland – a dreaming place, a good dreaming place with plenty of Barnkabarra (Mud Crabs). Elizabeth’s homeland lies east of Maningrida, at the mouth of Blyth river. This country is known for a large spiritual mud crab, which lives in the area.

Many families go and collect crabs to eat there with long sticks, or collect directly from the shores. Mud crabs hide in the muddy bottoms of estuaries and mangrove forests in areas surrounding Maningrida. After a king tide, a large cyclical tide which bring the crabs out from the mangroves, it is a good time to find crabs.

Barnkabarra (mud crabs) in Kuninjku language, or Rrugurrgurda (mud crabs) in the Burarra language, are good baladji (bush food in Burarra) and can be caught all year round. They are put on the fire to cook and they are ready when they turn a bright orange colour.

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Mabbúlarr

Mabbúlarr is the Ndjébbana word describing calm and stillness – both regarding people and the ocean.

This design tells the story of underwater life in the shallows. The turtle we call marláddja (green turtle, Chelonia mydas) and the stingray we call marnandjúbba (Cowtail Stingray, Pastinachus sephen).

‘When strong wind blows the sea is rough, when there’s no wind the sea is calm. We call that mábbularr. You can see through the water and look at the turtle and stingray eating karlómerr (sea grass) and dancing underwater to find their mate. When we go on the boat hunting, we go at times of mábbularr.

In the old days men used to hunt with a canoe and with traditional made harpoon.  Guided by our ancestors’ spirits they would paddle all day to find sea turtle and dugongs in the right places. The men had to be smart for the tide and know the weather to balance their canoes. They would go at times of mábbularr (calm), early morning in daytime or at night-time when there is no moon and the water glows. We call the night-time glimmer of phosphorescence mílarrng-milarrng. Today people still go hunting, it brings a lot of families together and they share eating down the beach.

We have songline for sea turtle, also men paint turtle on their back and dance turtle in the Míddjarn the same way turtle dance underwater. It is very important we look after our country and songline passed on from many generations’. Josephine James 2021

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Mandjabu

Kuninjku people traditionally make two sorts of conical fish traps. One is called mandjabu and is made from a strong, durable vine called milil, and a smaller one is called manylik mandjabu, and made from the grass manylik. The mandjabuconical fish trap is bigger and stronger and used in tidal reaches of creeks to catch large fish. The smaller, lighter manyliktrap is used in freshwater flowing creeks to catch smaller fish and freshwater prawns. In earlier times, only men were involved in the construction of the large fish traps, but children would often crawl inside and assist.

To make mandjabu, weavers firstly harvest milil (burney vine, Malaisia scandens) and put it in water overnight to make it soft. Then they start weaving it; they make rings for the inside to keep the fish trap’s shape. People also make string from the bark of burdaga (kurrajong) to attach the bardainy (hibiscus) rings and to tie the conical end of the fish trap. It’s hard work and it can take three or four weeks to make a fish trap. People also use fish-net fences called kunkarlewabe. They would put the kunkarlewabe  across rivers and creeks. In the middle they would place the mandjabu. They also used small things like sticks, rocks, mud and grass to block the fish from going through. This way we would catch fish such as saltwater barramundi rajarra, ngaldadmurrng (freshwater barramundi), small black freshwater catfish (buliya), bonefish (an-guwirrpiya), and sand bass (dalakan) in the mandjabu.

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Kukurlk Kare (minor missprints)

Karrinung kukurlk kare, karrijare manme (we are going underground looking for food).

“This is my country. In this painting, I’m looking at her little bit different way. This is what we see when we’re kukurlk kare (going underground)

Man-kurndalh (Black plum) I call mother. It is my mother’s Djang/Dreaming. The bush onion (kulumuduk) is white, the same as onions you buy at the store. We don’t eat this one though, it’s poison.

Wayuk is the water lily, with the big root growing in the earth. This is when that water is drying up a bit. There are worms and beetles- this is what we see underground, when we are digging for manme.”

-Jennifer Wurrkidj

Hand screen printed in Maningrida

 

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Kunronj (Freshwater Story)

Jennifer is a Kuninjku artist from the Kurulk clan whose country lies around the outstation of Mumeka in central Arnhem Land. Jennifer works at Bábbarra Women’s Centre alongside other members of her family who are also accomplished artists too: her mother, Helen Lanyinwanga (now deceased), sister Deborah Wurrkidj and daughter Abigail Namundja. She is a niece of Australia’s most highly acclaimed bark painter, John Mawurndjul, and she is renowned, in her own right, for her bark paintings, hollow logs and carved sculptures.

This design depicts important manme (food) sources from freshwater environments on Jennifer’s country and the implements used to gather these items.  The kunkaninjor digging stick featured in the design is used to dig for wayuk (waterlily) roots in billabongs, which are eaten fresh from the water or cooked on an open fire. The kunkaninj is also used to find and dig freshwater komrdawh (northern snake-necked turtle) that hibernate on the floodplains during the dry season.

Various fish species including the birlmu (barramundi), as shown here, are hunted with a spear or trapped inside a woven fish trap. This manme is carried within kunmadj (woven bags), which are made with fibres from the pandanus tree or sedge grasses, then enjoyed together by the family back at camp.

Printed by Publisher textiles, Sydney 2022

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Lorrkon

Before, a long time ago, when old people would die they would put their bones inside the lorrkkon and leave it outside. It is part of ceremony. The old people remembering and thinking about that person who passed away, there is lots of talking about where that lorrkkon needs to go.

My father, James Iyuna, taught me how to paint, to paint that rarrk. That memory is from him, he taught my sister Deborah and me. This story is from him, this design. When he was painting and drawing we would watch and we would learn.

Jennifer Wurrkidj

Jennifer is a Kuninjku artist from the Kurulk clan whose country lies around the outstation of Mumeka in central Arnhem Land. She has depicted lorrkkon (hollow-log coffin), kun-karninj (digging stick) and mandjabu (fishtrap) in this design.

The Lorrkkon or hollow-log coffin ceremony is the final ceremony in a sequence of mortuary rituals celebrated by the people of Arnhem Land. This ceremony might take place many years after the person has died, and involves the placing of the deceased’s bones into a hollow log that is decorated with painted clan designs and ceremonially placed into the ground where it slowly decays over many years.

The lorrkkon (hollow-log coffin) is made from the trunk of a termite-hollowed manbuluduk (stringybark tree, Eucalyptus tetradonta) and is decorated with totemic emblems. The western Arnhem Land version of the Lorrkkon ceremony involves the singing of sacred songs to the accompaniment of karlikarli, a pair of sacred boomerangs used as rhythm instruments. During the final evening of the ceremony, dancers decorate themselves with kapok down or, today, cotton wool, and conduct much of the final segments of the ceremony in the secrecy of a restricted men’s camp. The complete ceremony may stretch over a period of two weeks, but on the last night the bones of the deceased, which have been kept in a bark container, or today wrapped in cloth and kept in a suitcase, are taken out, and are painted with red ochre and placed inside the hollow-log coffin.

At first light on the final morning of the Lorrkkon ceremony, the men appear, coming out of their secret bush camp carrying the lorrkkon towards the women’s camp. The two groups call to each other using distinct ceremonial calls. The women have prepared a hole for the lorrkkon to be placed into, and when it is stood upright, women in particular kinship relationships to the deceased dance around the lorrkkon in a jumping/shuffling motion. It is then often covered with a tarpaulin and left to slowly decay.

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Kunronj (Freshwater Story)

Jennifer is a Kuninjku artist from the Kurulk clan whose country lies around the outstation of Mumeka in central Arnhem Land. Jennifer works at Bábbarra Women’s Centre alongside other members of her family who are also accomplished artists too: her mother, Helen Lanyinwanga (now deceased), sister Deborah Wurrkidj and daughter Abigail Namundja. She is a niece of Australia’s most highly acclaimed bark painter, John Mawurndjul, and she is renowned, in her own right, for her bark paintings, hollow logs and carved sculptures.

This design depicts important manme (food) sources from freshwater environments on Jennifer’s country and the implements used to gather these items.  The kunkaninjor digging stick featured in the design is used to dig for wayuk (waterlily) roots in billabongs, which are eaten fresh from the water or cooked on an open fire. The kunkaninj is also used to find and dig freshwater komrdawh (northern snake-necked turtle) that hibernate on the floodplains during the dry season.

Various fish species including the birlmu (barramundi), as shown here, are hunted with a spear or trapped inside a woven fish trap. This manme is carried within kunmadj (woven bags), which are made with fibres from the pandanus tree or sedge grasses, then enjoyed together by the family back at camp.

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Karrbarda (Long Yam)

“This design is about collecting karrbarda (yams). The old people use these kungarrndutj (digging sticks) to dig the yams from under the ground. They carry the kunmatj (dilly bags) on their heads for collecting bush food. These yams are purple on the saltwater side of country and inland they are white.” – Deborah Wurrkidj

Deborah Wurrkidj is a Kuninjku artist from the Kurulk clan whose country lies around the outstation of Mumeka in central Arnhem Land. In this design, she has depicted Kun-madj (dilly bag) and karrbarda (long yam). Women dig up long yams with kungarrndutj (digging sticks) and they are then cooked in the ashes of the fire to be eaten.

Kun-madj, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant that grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect heavy foods, such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams. They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant that grows in many areas of Arnhem Land.