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Manyali
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Firewood
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Burlupurr – dillybag
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is usually a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey.
Common colours used to dye pandanus used for weaving burlupurr include:
– barra gu-jirra: the soft, white and fleshy end of the pandanus leaf imparts green to the fibre.
– mun-gumurduk/ gala (Pogonolobus reticulatus): a bright yellow root that is crushed and put in a billycan with the fibre and boiled. It creates yellow when boiled once and deep orange hues when boiled multiple times.
– ngalpur (Haemodorum brevicaule): a bright red root which yields a range of purply red to brown colours.
– Baluk: ashes of certain plants are added to the boiling billycan with the fibre and dye plants to alter the colour that is imparted to the fibre. The fruiting body of gulpiny (Banksia denanta) is burnt and the ashes added to other day plants to make the colour pink.
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
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Coil Basket
Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups.
Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.
These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri.
The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land.
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Coil Basket
Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups.
Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.
These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri.
The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land.
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Kubumi (Anniebell Marrngamarrnga)
Kubumi is a sacred site on the Mann River. Anniebell Marrngamarrnga is the Djungkay (ritual manager) of this place, her mother’s country.
In the creation time, Ngalyod (the Rainbow Serpent) pierced the rock at a place called Bolerrhlerrh and journeyed downstream from there to Ngalmalanj, where the serpent was blocked. She pushed down into the riverbed, pushed into the earth, sinking down forever. Now she lives under the rocky riverbed.
The camping place Kubumi is downstream from Ngalmalanj. During the dry season, the Mann River shrinks to a chain of deep waterholes, exposing the tunnels through the rocky outcrop that interconnect the pools. At Kubumi live the Ngalkunburriyaymi, mermaid-like water spirits. In the distant past, they camped on the sand and were attracted to the freshwater, swimming there. Ngalyod, the Raibow Serpent, pulled them into the ground, through the rock holes.
Today they live within the river; at times they leave their aquatic homes to walk about on dry land, particularly at night. Sometimes they are called ngalberddjenj, which literally means ‘the woman who has a tail like a fish’. Their long hair is associated with trailing blooms of man-bak (green aglae) found in freshwater streams and rock pools.
Known for her intricately woven Yawkyawk and other figurative ancestral forms, Anniebell expands her practice in this work to encompass Kubumi itself — presenting the sacred site as a living, inhabited landscape shaped by Birlmu (barramundi), Nawarlah (brown river stingray), and the Ngalkunburriyaymi.
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Stingray, Kardab
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Kardab (Spider)
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Ngalkodjek Yawkyawk
This artwork depicts the Ngalkodjek Yawkyawk of Barrihdjowkkeng country.
“This story is very old. That old man [my father Crusoe Kuningbal] when he was alive, told that story to me, to all of us. He told us about the yawkyawk (mermaid) spirit women called Ngalkodjek who lives in the billabong on my country. He told us how they call out loudly, how they call out as they walk along.
That is what they do, calling out. They walked around eating bush foods like those little bush yams. They would pound the yams into a pulp and eat them. That is their traditional food which they eat.
When they walk down from the bush, they follow a set path that belongs to them and they walk along calling out. That is their path which they take. It is an old traditional route.
They placed a woman’s breast into the country. That rock was not there originally, but it was a woman’s breast. It is the breast of those women.
They put that djang [sacred place] there, and then at the time when non-Aboriginal people arrived in the region, then the breast turned to stone. Now it has turned solid into rock.”
– Owen Yalandja