This is a depiction of kinga, also known as namanjwarre, the saltwater crocodile (crocodylus porosus). These animals are totems for people of Yirridjdja moiety, one of the two patrimoieties of Arnhem Land aboriginal cultures. Crocodiles are rarely killed for food but their eggs are keenly sought after during the wet season when the females are nesting.
A major crocodile sacred site exists near the outstation of Kurrindin, in the Liverpool River district.
The artist has carved the ‘Gomarla’, which in the Burarra word for Egret. This bird is native to the country of Yilan, which is the coastal region North West of Maningrida Community.
People use feathers from gomarla to make ceremonial regalia for Yirrichinga. Many Yirrichinga groups own manikay ‘song’ for gomarla.
Gomarla mun-baparrurr Gopungorra. Jin-gubatbatcha jin-banga jiny-yorkiya. Gomarla waykin makukuya mu-guyinda.
The egret belongs to the Gopungorra clan. It always eats grasshoppers. The egret is high in a nest (builds its nest in the tree).
Namorrorddo is a profane spirit of a malevolent nature.
The Namorrorddo is a yirridjdja moiety being associated with the Yabbadurruwa regional ceremony.
Namorrorddo sits upon a rock and is usually painted with long claw like hands and feet. Sometimes spurs protrude from the elbows somewhat like those of a flying fox. Namorrorddo carries light, which emanates from his head. The shooting stars seen at night are Namorrorddo travelling across the night sky.
He whistles an eerie cry, which Bininj people say they can hear at night from time to time. Namorrorddo is feared as an evil being who attacks humans by clubbing them with his fighting stick or miyarrul. Namorrorddo is also sometimes depicted carrying bamboo spears and a spear thrower. Namorrorddo is a major dreaming totem for the Kardbam clan. There are a few examples of images of Namorrorddo painted in rock shelters in the Mann and Liverpool Rivers district.
Works in fibre from the Maningrida region are widely recognised as some of the finest in Australia. Artists confidently push the boundaries of fibre craft and cultural expression, adapting traditional techniques and forms to produce strikingly inventive and aesthetically exquisite artworks.
In 2003, Kuninjku artist Marina Murdilnga brought a revolutionary new form of pandanus weaving to Maningrida Arts & Culture: a flat yawkyawk made from knotted pandanus on a jungle-vine frame, painted with natural pigments. She next explored using dyed pandanus and feathers in this way. Murdilnga’s innovation inspired many other weavers, who are producing an array of beautifully resolved flat figurative works (stingray, butterflies, spiderwebs) and spiritual figures and Ancestral beings. Alongside Murdilnga, leading artists of this form of fibre art are Anniebell Marnngamarnnga, Frewa Bardaluna and Rembarrnga artists Vera Cameron and Maisie Cameron. Lulu Larandjbi has woven interpretations of the rock pools at Kobumi where Ngalyod (the Rainbow Serpent) entered and died.
Commonly used fibres include the leaves of pandanus (Pandanus spiralis), and palms (Livistonus), mírlírl (burney or jungle vine, Malaisia scandens), and the inner bark of kurrajong and stringybark eucalyptus trees. Weaving is physically hard work, now done only by women. They colour the pandanus using natural dyes made from the roots, leaves or flowers of plants within the weaver’s clan estate. The same dye bath is often used to dye a number of batches of fibre, with variations in the colours depending on the time spent in the dye bath and the potency of the bath. The women skilfully use salt and wood ash as mordants and colour enhancers.
Kwetyaylp (donkeys) and nantew (horses) would come and drink from the water at Spring Creek on my father’s country. We would put a bucket in the sand we would filter the water so we could drink it.
When I was young girl we would go to Canteen Creek following the track along the hills, we would hunt turkey, emus and kangaroo and we would cut the bark and collect the sap from the sugar bag trees. `
The early morning mist over the water is the smoke from the breakfast fires of the Marrga, the creation spirits. According to Yindjibarndi law, in the beginning the sky was very low. When the creation spirits, Marrga, arose from the ground they raised the sky and the world out of the ocean. This creation story is called Ngurru Nyujunnggama, ‘When the World was Soft’. The Marrga gave names and form to the country and then to all the birds and animals. Finally they created the Ngaardangarli, the Aboriginal people.
“This is my grandmother’s and mother’s Country, Yalta. It’s very close to Kunawarritji side. I’ve never been there. That was where my mother was born during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) times. All the tali (sandhills) around. I want to go there one day, to see that Country, I might go there one day”
– Marianne Burton
Yalta is a waterhole located between the Great Sandy Desert’s Percival Lakes region and Kunawarritji Aboriginal community. This site was visited by the Ngayurnangalku (cannibals) during the Jukurrpa (Dreaming). These fearsome ancestral cannibal beings are said to resemble people in their appearance, except for their fangs and long curved knife like fingernails they use to catch and hold their human victims. The Ngayurnangalku continue to live beneath the crust of Kumpupirntily (Kumpupintily, Lake Disappointment), south east of Yalta.
Yalta lies within Marianne’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her grandmother and mother. As stated by Marianne here, the site is especially significant to her as it was here that her mother was born. 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 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.
This plant is used for burning the bark. During summer it is used alot. by burning the dry bark like a charcoal. Run in your hand and put on the body to keep cool. The flower from this tree is white. When in bloom it reminds us of the white Cockatoo
The Rock formation is made of many different colours. When the big flood comes, all the rocks and pebbles take shape and the beauty of colours in the country take their place. The colours that we use for Tribal Ceremony are white, yellow, red and black and most of these colours are used from the rocks. The different size and shape rocks are made into bricks.
