Traditional perspectives

Ngarlu is near Mt Allan Station, east of Yuendumu. The primary Dreaming for the site is Yanyirlingi (Sugarleaf), a plant with sweet nectar that is eaten by Aboriginal people.

The depiction of this Dreaming is complex and has several levels of meaning. Women are shown both gathering Sugarleaf and performing a yawulyu, or women's ceremony associated with the Dreaming. In addition, an actual event - the birth of two jampijinpa boys to two nugarrayi sisters - at a camp near Ngarlu is shown.

The Dreaming story concerns an illicit relationship between a jungarrayi man and his classificatory mother in law, a napangardi. The man happened to pass by while the woman was urinating. He desired her and began to spin hairstring for a pubic tassel, singing love songs while he did so. This had the intended result of drawing her to his campsite at Ngarlu.

by Lucy Napaljarri, Hilda Napaljarri, and Ruth Napaljarri from Yuendumu, Central Australia. Acrylic on canvas, 1986. Fig 159, pages 120/121/223, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia. Edited by Peter Sutton, Courtesy South Australian Museum

This painting is from the north western part of the western desert region of WA and the artist utilizes a joined-bar design typical of artefact decoration from the area. The painting encodes a complex story of the origins of a series of water holes and underground streams (jila) focused at a place called Japingka. During the creation period a large group of travelling ancestors visited the area.

After being at Japingka for some time, they lay down, water welled up around them to form the jila and the men then turned into a large mythological snake, who is still resident at the site.

The joined-bar forms are stylized sandhills. The central motif is Jila Japingka, with its four extensions representing other water holes and rain coming from different directions. The four small roundels at the upper right represent Pajpara, secret water holes only open for initiated men.

by Peter Skipper from Fitzroy Crossing. Acrylic on canvas, 1987. Fig 141, pages 100/101/227, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia Edited by Peter Sutton Courtesy South Australian Museum

This painting concerns the Landscape history of the Wessell Islands area. On the left is the female Squid, who created all the families and places along the Wessell Islands chain. She is still present there in the form of a rock formation at the island of Djidinja, where the black mark of the Squid's ink can be seen flowing from land to sea. The black paint on the Squid represents this ink. The male Squid, on the right, allocated the places created by the female Squid to estates owned by different Aboriginal clans, the same clans that exist today. Going south along the chain, he handed named sacred places over to each of about eleven clans.

The Squid is known locally as a healer. The bands of cross-hatching next to the male Squid and on the Turtle's carapace contain the colour sequence black, red, yellow and white. These represent night, sunset, sunrise and still water at midday, respectively. The cross-hatching is loaded with contrasts of intensity creating a shimmering brilliance indicative of ancestral power.

The story is told that the Squid transformed into the Turtle. The Turtle in this region is associated with the relationship between weather and the relative safety of sea travel. Once a year she travels underwater north along the Wessell Islands chain. When she comes up she exhales air which turns into clouds and these clouds are a sign the sea is smooth, the weather is calm and the fishing is plentiful.

by Liwukang Bukurlatjpi from North East Arnhem Land. Ochre on bark, 1972.
Fig 81, pages 54/55, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia
Edited by Peter Sutton. Courtesy South Australian Museum

This painting is a partial representation of the creation of the artist's clan country in the area of Ramingining. The symmetry of the work is no mere decorative device; it has religious, political and social connotations. The story concerns the travels of the founding ancestral figures known over much of Arnhem Land as the Djan `kawu Sisters.

As they travelled from place to place, paddling their canoe and walking overland, they created the clans (landowning groups) and their languages, naming natural phenomena and creating spring waters by plunging their digging sticks into the ground. In Manharrngu clan country they created the well Milmindjarr and had a ceremony there. They were looking for fish and caught small catfish which is represented in the painting. They gave birth to the people of the area.

The tide swells, rising up the river's course, which is entered by fish. Later, the tide will turn, and water and fish will be borne out into the sea. Elements from only a few episodes of this story are shown in the painting and the meanings of some motifs are kept secret.

by David Malangi from Central Arnhem Land. Ochre on bark, 1982.
Fig 80, pages 52/53, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia
Edited by Peter Sutton. Courtesy South Australian Museum

This painting features three main figures: two women and their husband, all of whom are ancestral Mimi spirits. The women are shown dancing after having given birth. The stirrup like appendages hanging from the hips (and one elbow) of the figures are bags in which the Mimis carry the children. The central female figure has a 'power bag' protruding from one shoulder, and the man on her right has feathers protruding from his knees and ankles as he sings with the women. The straight, fine and symmetrical cross hatching on the torsos and thighs is a sign of a particularly sacred element.

These figures are said to be 'close to the source of all life - and death'. Mimi spirits are supposed to be very thin - living in the cracks of rocks in the escarpment of Northern Australia. Before the coming of Aboriginal people they had human forms. The Mimi are generally harmless but on occasions can be mischievous. When Aboriginal people first came to northern Australia, the Mimi taught them how to hunt and cook kangaroos and other animals.

They also did the first rock paintings and taught Aboriginal people how to paint.

by Yirrawala from Western Arnhem Land. Ochre on bark, 1972.
Fig 79, page 51, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia
Edited by Peter Sutton. Courtesy South Australian Museum

Purrukuparli lived with his wife Pima and baby son Tjinini on Melville Island, at a place called Impanari. Purrukuparli was strongly attached to his son. When Pima was away food-gathering during the day, she would leave Tjinini in the shade of a tree and go to meet her lover Thaparra. One hot day, Pima returned late to find that the shade had moved and that her baby had died of exposure in the intense heat.

Purrukuparli, enraged and grief stricken, beat his wife. He then engaged Thaparra in a fight, and both were badly wounded with throwing sticks. Thaparra asked for the body of Tjinini, promising to bring it back to life in three days. Purrukuparli refused, picked up his son's body, which was wrapped in paperbark, and walked backwards with it into the sea, never to return.

His footprints still remain visible on the ground. At the spot where he drowned, there appeared a whirlpool, which has continued to be a sign of danger to any visitors there. When Thaparra saw what had happened, he transformed himself into the moon, who dies for three days each month and whose face bears the scars of his fight with Purrukuparli. All these main elements in the story are represented by motifs in the painting.

by Marruwani from Melville Island. Ochre on bark 1954
Fig 78, page 50, Dreamings; The Art of Aboriginal Australia Courtesy South Australian Museum