Gyorn Gyorns
This painting represents the bush foods of the country and how it was collected.
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Gyorn Gyorn
This Gyorn Gyorn painting represents the bush food of the area. The hunting tools around it were used in collecting this food.
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Wandjinas (cloud and rain spirits)
Where you see a lot of Wandjinas they represent the laws of trees, rivers, rocks, bush fruit, animals and all of creation. The Wandjinas give the law on how we have to treat and use these creations. These customs are carried on today. The Wandjina spirits are highly respected by the Worrora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people who live at Mowanjum and up the Gibb River Road to Kalumburru in the North West Kimberley region of Western Australia.
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Wandjina & Dumbee
The Wandjina is the creator spirit that belongs to us: the Wororra, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people. He is the one that created everything; our culture, law and songs and even the dreaming of each child before they are born.
Dumbi is an owl which resides in Ngarinyin country. A boy and a girl teased Dumbi and plucked out his feathers. Dumbi flew to the Wandjina Wodjin who said he would create a large flood to punish the tribe from where the boy and girl came. At a place called Wanalirri, the Wandjina gathered a large flock of brolgas which stomped on a huge black soil plain to create quicksand. The flood came and drowned many people; those who tried to escape were lost in the quicksand. The boy and girl were safe because they were on high ground, they were taken there by a kangaroo, and they traveled on the kangaroo’s tail. A Tata lizard called Ganada warned the Wandjina that the boy and the girl had escaped. The rains and lightning started to chase the boy and girl and they ran to a hollowed out boab tree. Once they were in the tree, the Wandjina closed it up and they were lost for ever. In another version of the story the boy and girl survive the flood and mate to produce a new tribe.
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Wandjina & Wara Inja (cloud and rain spirits & kangaroo)
The Wandjina spirits are highly respected by the Worrora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people who live at Mowanjum and up the Gibb River Road to Kalumburru in the North West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Where you see a lot of Wandjinas they represent the laws of tree, rivers, rocks, bush fruit and animals, all creation. These customs are carried on today. This painting represents the kangaroo and how people hunted them. They were hunted for food and used the skin of female kangaroos for making hair belts.
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Wandjina (cloud and rain spirits)_Framed
The Wandjina spirits are highly respected by the Worrora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people who live at Mowanjum and along the Gibb River Road to Kalumburru in the North West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Wandjina represents the laws of everything the surrounds us trees, rivers, rocks, bush fruit and animals, all creation. The Wandjinas give the law on how we have to treat and use these creations. These customs are carried on today.
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Wandjina and Kangaroo
The Wandjina spirits are highly respected by the Worrora, Ngarinyin and Wunumbul people who live at Mowanjum and up the Gibb River Road to Kalumburru in the North West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Where you see a lot of Wandjinas they represent the laws of tree, rivers, rocks, bush fruit and animals, all creation. These customs are carried on today. This painting represents the kangaroo and how people hunted them. They were hunted for food and used the skin of female kangaroos for making hair belts.
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Black-headed Python, Flood, 4 womens and queen Wandjina bees
Black Headed Pythons
In the dreamtime the black-headed pythons and their partner the widgignardi (quoll) were all living in a cave- they were humans then. One day he told them that there was a tribal fight along the coast, and he was going there to fight. When he got there, he started fighting and when he was speared, he left the fight bleeding and went near a waterhole where he was in pain, he started twisting around in pain and then he died.
His spirit left his body and returned to the two pythons in the cave he called out to them, and they both answered him and asked why he was calling out to them. He told them that they speared him, and he died near a waterhole. So, then they told him to return to the waterhole and let his spirit rest there. They were now widows so they started crying for him because they had no-one to take care of them anymore, so they cut off their hair to bald and covered their faces with charcoal and cried all during the night till daybreak. They made a fire in the cave and covered it up with leaves to smoke the cave where they all stayed in there with their partners belongings too.
Then they went out towards the hills when they got near to the hills, they both climbed up onto the two hills to wait for the sun to rise.
4 Womans
These 4 womens were living with their families and relatives as well. One day a man walked into their camp with spears and some old and young men were sitting under a big bough shed. When they saw him they called out to him and welcomed him to join them. He was out hunting and was returning back to his camp so they told him that he could spend the night with him because it was getting dark so he stayed overnight.
The old ladies to the cooking for the men and asked the 4 women to help out so they agreed to help and when they took the food over to the mens under the bough shed they saw the newcomer among them and everytime they bring food over they dress themselves up.
The old mens and the old womens knew what was happening because they were flirting for that man that was there with them. So the old mens and womens called out to them privately and when they got them they told them that what they were doing wasn’t right because they said you womens and that man can’t have any relationship because you all have the same skin and can’t marry one another because its wrong and it will start a fight among ourselves with his families and relatives as well and we don’t want that to happen.
So the womens forgot about him and dressed up with the clothes they had on before. These 2 are our skin groups in our 3 tribes- Wodoi and Jungin.
Flood
These two boys caught an owl and was plucking out his feathers then they left them on the ground. The owl flew up towards the sky to the Wandjinas and they saw it coming towards them then they asked the owl what had happened. It told them what the boys had done to it and the Wandjinas got angry. They asked the animals to look for the two boys but they never returned to the Wandjinas. So the wandjinas saw a ta-ta lizard and they asked it to go and find the two boys, so it did find them in the riverbed with their families and relatives so it ran back onto a rock and waved at the Wandjinas and told them where the boys were.
The Wandjinas started to make rain and the brolgas started dancing in the mud then the rain started to pour and started a flood and the river rose up and drowned some of the people. But some started swimming towards the land. A kangaroo was swimming by and the 2 boys grabbed its tail and it took them towards higher ground they jumped off and ran towards a boab tree that had a hole in the centre of it and they both ran inside to get out of the rain and then the hole closed up behind them and that’s when no-one saw them again because they got punished for what they did.
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The three tribes, Wodoi and Jungun
The three tribes are the Worrora, Wunumbul and Ngarinyin. The three tribes represent the Wandjina who made them what they are today. They’re from the North Kimberley region of Western Australia. The area that makes up the three tribes starts from Oobagooma which is 150km north of the coast of Derby, east across towards inland to Iminji and all the way up to Kalumburru. The tribes have travelled, moved and lived together and share similar stories, culture and language with different dialects. They still follow the law, culture and language of the land today carrying on strong and sharing it.
From left to right we have Wannalirri (Ngarinyin) Wandjina. He was the Wandjina that brought all the Wandjina’s together to send the big flood to drown the people, because of what the children had done to the Dumbi the owl.
The Wandjina in the centre is called Namarali (Worrora) Wandjina. He is the only one with spears sticking out of his head. Namarali stole a wife of one of the other Wandjinas and they both ran away to the coast to a place called Langi. The husband of the women rounded up the other Wandjinas and they went after the two and caught up with them at Langi and they surrounded him (Namarali). They all threw their spears at him and as he was dying he told them to bury him in the sand but bury him on the nearby hill. To this day you can see the rock formations of the Wandjinas at the battle at Langi, and Namarali is the biggest rock of them all.
The third Wandjina on the right is Rimmijmurra (Wunambul). This Wandjina likes stealing so thats how it got his name.
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Wandjina & Gyorn Gyorn (cloud and rain spirits & Bradshaws)
The Wandjina spirits are highly respected by the people of Mowanjum. They brought the law, culture and language. The people of Mowanjum believe that the first Wandjina was called Idjair, who lives in the Milky Way and is the father of all Wandjinas. The Wandjina Wallungunda (milky way) was Idair’s first son; he created the Earth and all life upon it. After he created the first human beings, the Gyorn Gyorn people, Wallungunda traveled back to Idjair to bring back more Wandjinas to give the Gyorn Gyorn people laws to live by. Today the Gyorn Gyorns are known to give our corroborree and became hunters, collectors and gatherers.