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Wild Flowers in Wili

“This painting is about waterholes in my Grandfather’s Country Wili. They used to walk around in circles searching for bush tucker and water from the waterholes. The different colours represent the wildflowers, the brown is the sand dunes and the circles are the waterholes.”
 – Bibianna Tumbler

This artwork celebrates the wildflowers that bloom across Country, marking the shifting seasons and bringing life, colour to the land. After rain, the desert and coastal plains burst into flower — tiny seeds waking up from the red sand, small petals spreading across dunes, claypans, and saltwater flats.

Flowers show when certain foods are ready and when animals are moving. They signal the time for gathering bush fruits, digging for bush potatoes, collecting honey, and hunting goanna, turkey, and other animals that become fat after the rains. The colours used in this painting reflect the bright and subtle beauty of seasonal flowers — yellows, pinks, purples, and whites scattered across bold desert tones and deep coastal blues.

Categories: Bidyadanga Aboriginal Community LaGrange Inc

Name: Bibianna Tumbler

Language: Juwaliny

Community: Bidyadanga

Biography:

“I was born at La Grange at the old hospital. I grew up there and have been there all my life with my parents. I started painting in 2015. What inspired me the most is the way the old people used to tell me stories about their Country and their families’ background. When they used to paint, they used the colours to represent the land, seas, flowers, animals and other things.”
– Bibianna Tumbler

Bibianna’s paintings often depict her Grandfather’s Country in the Great Sandy Desert, showing red desert sands, waterholes, wildflowers, and bush foods such as kumpaja (bush nuts). Her works carry the memory of ancestors walking the desert, searching for bush tucker and water, and reflect the colours of both desert and sea. She began painting in 2015 and continues to share the stories passed down by her Elders through her detailed use of line, colour, and circle motifs.

Her talent has been recognised across the Kimberley. In 2025, Bibianna won the Indigenous Art Award at the Shinju Art Award in Broome and the Kimberley Art and Photography Prize in Derby.

“Through storytelling and painting about Grandfather or Grandmother’s Country, I can help teach future generations.”
– Bibianna Tumbler

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