November 2023

NUGUWARRDING (Snake Dreaming) – Tommy Carroll

This painting tells a story about NUGUWARRDING, that rainbow serpent, who travelled and lived around this area now called Doon Doon. Tommy says, “He went up to my grandfather’s country at the back of Speewah where there are gorges and rock holes.”

The solid circles represent the water holes in this area and the fluid lines are the hills around Doon Doon.

Tommy continues, “the story of this place was told to me when I was a young fella by my grandfather and his father. This snake was a father for this country, he traveled all over, sometimes he would stay for a few days then he would leave and pass through the next water place and stayed a bit longer.”

Jarlarloon – Patrick Mung

Patrick Mung Mung has been turning his brush to his grandmother and mother’s country Jarlaloon, as new memories of these days drift back evoking reconnection and reflection. Patrick says – ‘I’ve bin thinking clear lately. My mind is good and my memories are all coming back good and clear. My grandmother and my mother and their country, and life the way we used to live. All the stories they would tell me. All my old people and those times living old ways.”

The varied pink ochres found, collected and prepared by Gija artists and artsworkers, feature in this new body of work. His late wife B Carrington also loved to use these in her later work and he talks at times of finding her in those colours.

Eagle and Crow Dreaming

This is the main story for Warrmun (meaning “a place to camp”). This story took place just behind the present day Warmun Community. In the Ngarrangkarni (Dreamtime) both the eagle and the crow were people. The Eaglehawk and his wife the crow were sitting either side of a patch of white rock (quartz). The Eaglehawk was busy making spearheads from the hard quartz and asked the crow to help. Eaglehawk was ready to hunt for kangaroo. First he built up a fire of hot rocks so that they would have somewhere to cook the kangaroo. Eaglehawk asked the crow again, but she refused. Eaglehawk went out hunting and came back with a small, fat, girl kangaroo. When he got back to the camp, Crow was asleep. In anger the Eaglehawk threw a piece of quartz rock at the crow, striking her in the eye, and took the hot rocks from the fire and burnt the crow all over for being so lazy. They both turned into birds, and that is why crows are black with a white circle around their eyes. In the hill behind Warmun you can still see the white quartz camp of the eagle and the crow.

Jarlaloo Country

Jarlaloo is Patrick’s country. It lies south of Warmun and north of Purnululu (Bungle Bungles). Patrick knows this country inside out, as he walked and mustered cattle all throughout this country with his father, George Mung Mung. Jarlaloo is the Gija name for the Ord River, where it runs into Stony Creek. There are a lot of doworrolji in this country – doworrolji are rocks heaped up into ridges.

Jarlaloo Country

Jarlaloo is Patrick’s country. It lies south of Warmun and north of Purnululu (Bungle Bungles). Patrick knows this country inside out, as he walked and mustered cattle all throughout this country with his father, George Mung Mung. Jarlaloo is the Gija name for the Ord River, where it runs into Stony Creek. There are a lot of doworrolji in this country – doworrolji are rocks heaped up into ridges.