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Two Countries: Kun Kun (Kuny-Kuny) and Nganjirr
“Grandfather’s Country, not far from Well 33, called Nganjirr. Not far, [you] can go up by car. Go camping there. When it rains, fills up, then is dry.
Two Countries – Nganjirr and Kun Kun (Kuny-Kuny), Marlene’s Country. [You] can just go out for the day- lovely and quiet. Go hunting and get some jinyjwirrily (wild gooseberry, or desert raisins)”
– Kara Patch
Nganjirr and Kun Kun are both significant parts of Kara’s ‘ngurra’ (home Country, camp). Nganjirr, a grouping of three rockholes just south of Kil-kil (Canning Stock Route Well 36), is an importaint place for the Patch family through two brothers, Nganjirrmarta and Wirrulypa. A large marntila/tarntulu (Acacia pruinocarpa) sitting on rocky outcrop close to Nganjirr is used to locate the rockholes.
Kun Kun (Kuny-kuny) is a soak accessing a large body of underground water, located southeast of Kunawarritji (Canning Stock Route Well 33). The site is sacred for its association with the marlu (kangaroo) Jukurrpa (Dreaming), and was an important ceremonial site during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) period. Soaks, or soakwaters, derive their name from the manner in which their waters generally seep into the sand from below stores, sometimes as part of an ephemeral river or creek. Soaks were an especially important source of water during the pujiman era, being the most dependable water source in times of drought. Water was obtained from soaks by scooping away the sand with a piti (timber bowls used for carrying food and water) until clear water gathered at the base of the hole, sometimes at a depth of several metres.
In the Pujiman time, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. Knowledge of water sources was critical for survival, and today Martu Country is still defined in terms of the location and type of water. Each of the hundreds of claypans, rockholes, waterholes, soaks and springs found in the Martu desert homelands is known by name, location, quality and seasonal availability through real life experience and the recounting of Jukurrpa narratives.
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Makassan Boat
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Country
In 1931 sisters Molly Craig, Daisy Kadibil and Gracie Fields were taken from their families, like many other Aboriginal children at that time, and transported to Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth. They were taken away in the belief that part-Aboriginal children should be trained as domestic servants.
The three girls escaped the next day and, incredibly, walked 1600 kilometres home to Jigalong using the Rabbit-Proof Fence to navigate. The Rabbit Proof Fence remains the world’s longest fence, and was built in the early 1900s to separate rabbits from pasture. For nine weeks, the girls followed its length in order to be reunited with their family. They crossed a flooded river, sand dunes, heathlands, wheatbelts and plains, claypans and salt lakes. They slept in dug-out rabbit burrows, and caught and cooked rabbits, along with other plant based bush tucker. For the duration of their journey they were pursued by policeman and an Aboriginal police tracker.
The girls’ story has been immortalised in the novel “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” by Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara, 1996), and was adapted into the film “Rabbit Proof Fence” (2002). This story retains special significance for the Martu, and in particular those inhabitants of Jigalong Aboriginal community. The three girls were Martu, and their children and grandchildren continue to live in the Martu homelands today.
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Country
“When I was a little girl, my sister and I would visit our nanna [Molly Craig]. We really looked after her and checked if she had any food and sometimes she would say ” I’m hungry one.” We would race home to make damper and cook some meat and take it back to her before it got dark. She was a caring and beautiful lady but she never told her story about what happened when she was young because my sister and I were part of welfare. That’s why my sister and I had a great connection with our nanna, an unspoken connection.”
– Kathleen Sorenson
In 1931 sisters Molly Craig, Daisy Kadibil and Gracie Fields were taken from their families, like many other Aboriginal children at that time, and transported to Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth. They were taken away in the belief that part-Aboriginal children should be trained as domestic servants.
The three girls escaped the next day and, incredibly, walked 1600 kilometres home to Jigalong using the Rabbit-Proof Fence to navigate. The Rabbit Proof Fence remains the world’s longest fence, and was built in the early 1900s to separate rabbits from pasture. For nine weeks, the girls followed its length in order to be reunited with their family. They crossed a flooded river, sand dunes, heathlands, wheatbelts and plains, claypans and salt lakes. They slept in dug-out rabbit burrows, and caught and cooked rabbits, along with other plant based bush tucker. For the duration of their journey they were pursued by policeman and an Aboriginal police tracker.
The girls’ story has been immortalised in the novel “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” by Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara, 1996), and was adapted into the film “Rabbit Proof Fence” (2002). This story retains special significance for the Martu, and in particular those inhabitants of Jigalong Aboriginal community. The three girls were Martu, and their children and grandchildren continue to live in the Martu homelands today.
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Canning Stock Route (Wells 1 to 5)
“When they were laying out the Canning Stock Route, whitefellas used to get Martu people to show them where the permanent water was. The whitefellas was asking Martu people to show them permanent water, like soaks and rockholes, for a shortcut from Wiluna to Billiluna. When the whitefellas found out where the permanent water was, they made wells in every place and they called it the Canning Stock Route. That was how they went cut-across.”
– Yanjimi Peter Rowlands (dec.)
Western Australia’s gold rush, beginning in 1885, created a huge demand for beef from mines located between Halls Creek and Wiluna. At that time, most of Western Australia’s cattle came from the Kimberley, though an infestation of tropical ticks among the East Kimberley herds gave the West Kimberley pastoralists a monopoly on the beef trade — causing prices to soar. A Royal Commission in 1904 proposed the construction of a stock route through Western Australia’s desert country to eliminate the ticks through exposure to its hot, dry conditions, resulting in the near 2000 kilometre Canning Stock Route. The proposal was successful insofar as the eradication of ticks was concerned; however, the establishment of the Canning Stock Route was to have far reaching repercussions for Western Australia’s Aboriginal population.
The construction of the route by Alfred Canning and his team in 1910 resulted in first contact with Europeans for many Martu then living a pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) life in the desert. This contact began with Canning’s use of Aboriginal guides to lead him to the sources of water that would be transformed into 48 stock route wells. Acts of cruelty toward these guides included, amongst other things, chaining them at night to prevent their escape and giving them salt water to drink, thereby ensuring their thirst and subsequent necessity to lead the party to water sources.
Following the construction of the Canning Stock Route, 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, pujiman 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 pujiman to move in from the desert. One of the last major migrations of Martu people occurred in 1963, when many of the pujiman born Martumili Artists moved to Jigalong.
Patterns of movement which had defined Aboriginal people’s relationships to Country were forever changed by the Canning Stock Route, but the Martu relationship with Country remains strong through the maintenance of physical and cultural ties to desert life and knowledge.
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Untitled
This work portrays an area known to the artist, painted here from memory. During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), and different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation) were carefully observed and remembered. Today, this relationship with Country remains equally strong, despite the movement of Martu out of the desert and into remote Aboriginal communities, towns and cities.
Also visible may be traces of life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire). A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is visible in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.
Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land.
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Landscape Aerial
“When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries. So nowadays you see a colourful painting and wonder what it is, but that’s how Martu tell story long ago. It’s not just a lovely painting, it’s a story and a songline and a history and everything that goes with it.”
– Ngalangka Nola Taylor and Joshua Booth
This work portrays an area of Country that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly, the image may be read as an aerial representation of a particular location known to the artist- either land that they or their family travelled, from the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era to now. During the pujiman period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time, one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation), ngarrini (camps), and jina (tracks) are typically recorded with the use of a use of a system of iconographic forms universally shared across the desert.
An additional layer of meaning in the work relates to more intangible concepts; life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire) are also often evident. A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is evident in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.
Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land. Very often, however, information relating to Jukurrpa is censored by omission, or alternatively painted over with dotted patterns.