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Bawáliba and Ngalyod (Rainbow Serpent)

‘My Kikka (mother), when she was alive, she would tell me these stories. I was just a  little girl and she would tell us the stories in her language Gurrgoni.

In the camps there were boy and girl Bawáliba, and old Bawáliba too. They loved to dance by the firelight, keeping rhythm with a stick. They had lots of hair, they were really tall and skinny, with spots on their bodies. The Bawáliba lived a long time in peace. They were the only spirits on their country and so they were never disturbed.

One day, a long time ago, the Bawáliba were out hunting, and they saw a large snake- they didn’t know then but she was the Rainbow Serpent. They were really scared, they had never seen that. creature before. She was really beautiful- like a normal king brown snake but with a rainbow from the sky on her back. The rainbow serpent was really hungry, and she could smell the Bawáliba from a long way away.  She was out looking for food.  The Bawáliba tried to stop Ngalyod coming for them but she was just too quick. She snuck up behind the Bawáliba and before they could get away she ate them up. When she was really full and couldn’t eat anymore Bawáliba she changed the rest of  them into stone. Still till this day, the Bawáliba stay on that same country as stones.’

Lucy Yarawanga

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Eiffel tower and the Maladj spirit

“I want to tell you about my design, that Eiffel tower one.

This year it was my first time going to Paris. I didn’t know that place, nothing. We travelled around the world to get there, we flew underneath the world in an aeroplane.

Paris was a big, crowded city. They speak a different language there, just like here in Maningrida with all our different languages.

The Bábbarra artists and Ingrid, we were all walking around, like tourists. We went on the boat in the Paris river. There was a film crew taking videos of us. We saw so many beautiful buildings covered with black string (iron balconies) and big statues. We’d never seen things like that before.

I remember when we got off that boat and I looked up and saw that tower. When I first looked up at that tower, it made me happy- it’s so long up into the sky. We walked towards it. I was standing there watching that tower and thinking, ‘wow, first time for me seeing a tower like that’.

Then I was thinking, and I said to myself, when I go back to my own country, I’m going to paint that tower.

We came to Maningrida, I started to draw. I drew that tower from France, but also I drew maladj (stone country orphan spirit), women’s sacred woven mat, fish traps and rolk (insects). I also put round kunngol (clouds) in the design, those circles. That maladj spirit, it’s standing there next to the Eiffel tower, looking at the dancing lights at night. The tower is from Paris, but everything else in my design I took from my mother’s country and my father’s country.

Maybe one day I’ll travel back to France, and take my design with me to show them, all the French mob.” Janet Marawarr