The art and the dragonfly
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
"There are so many dragonflies in the air around us that you feel a dragonfly collision is an imminent possibility".
As the day fades across the waters of the Liverpool River, the reddening sky with its polished marbled patterns reflect golden in the gently undulating waves. On Mangrove shore where giant crocodiles sleep something remarkable is happening.
Like the day, the wet season is also drawing to a close. After the hard rains of the last few weeks, softer days of sunlight and a blueing sky return to this land. Of the six seasons, this is Yekke (Yegge), and a time of early morning mists that sit softly on the Spear Grass green land, the mists vanishing in a swift evaporation in the morning sun.
The Arnhem Land bush is at its very best, all glossy and green in the dancing light, the bright blue sky above and the brown, green waters below.
We stand on the rocky and sandy shore and the air is full of a million dragonflies (djalangkarridjdjalangkarridj) and the cycle of life in Arnhem Land begins once more.
There are so many dragonflies in the air around us that you feel a dragonfly collision is an imminent possibility. Although the aerobatics are swift, they know their stuff and weave in and out of each other in a kind of delicate and high-speed ballet. There are many species of dragonfly here, a great jumble of life.
Our Aboriginal friends fish for tonight’s meal in the darkening light. The cooling weather makes the fish scarce so there is not much luck tonight. Three hundred metres away a Saltwater Crocodile drifts slowly by. At a guess about four metres in length, the shape of its great and powerful spear shaped head distinct on the patterned surface of the river’s mouth. This really is a great and nature filled place and it is called Arnhem Land.
The next day the sun rises over wetland where the flooding rivers run clear again, both inviting in their cool sparkle and instantly deadly, knowledge is required here. In the wetlands the water is still and decorated with water lilies, many in bloom.
Here the water reflects the world above. In this end of wet season mirrored world of reflections there are two worlds, one above us, and another below our wet feet.
As we stand in this place, we think about decades past and what connects us here. The answer is in a painting, a bark painting by Mick Kubarkku, a great artist of the rugged escarpment country of Western Arnhem Land. Mick was born in 1925 at Kukabarnka in the wetland region of the Liverpool River. In 1974 we had found ourselves in a distant land, of which we knew little beyond the clichéd nonsense being peddled by its governments of the 1950s and 1960s.
A long way from where we stand now, so it was, that early in 1975 and in a mission shop in Melbourne’s Collins Street we saw the bark paintings of Arnhem Land. A shaft of piercing light, here was a reality and something that really mattered. Here was Australia revealed before us. So in that one work of a Saltwater Crocodile and Barramundi on bark, which we purchased immediately, was opened up a new world and a new knowledge about place and meaning, about life and spirituality, about law and knowledge. So this is why Andrea and I owe Maningrida a deep sense of gratitude for opening up new worlds, once so distant from our own.
And just as many Indigenous people travel the world with their art exhibitions, we decided to follow our own art trail to Indigenous Australia all those years ago. We think back over the years now past and the many travels with Indigenous people on this continent, all of it just amazing.
Before the missions small groups and communities of Aboriginal people lived across Arnhem Land. The people were rounded up put into larger communities like Maningrida (Manayingkarírra) with a population of around 3,500. There are now several language groups in the Maningrida population, Nakara, Ndjébbana, Gurrgone, Kunbarlang, Burarra, Kuninjku (Eastern Kunwinjku), Kune (Mayali), Rembarrnga and Djinang.
Maningrida connects to its 30 outstations, important places for ceremony, keeping culture and art making. The roads are cut during the wet season so we all travel by air or by boat.
So things have changed radically in Arnhem Land over the last hundred years, a kind of ebb and flow of outside interference from governments of left and right. Ideologies and theories about life and how we live in this world, thrust upon an Indigenous world. Our way is better than yours, so this is the new plan. An intervention here, a basics card there, and on and on it goes, special laws and prisons, especially for Indigenous people. Wrong of course and nothing changes in the minds far down south.
What we should all hope for is that Aboriginal people continue to defend their lands in the resilient, vigilant, vigorous, courageous and powerful ways in which they have always done.
In this way, as the day’s end approaches, we will come to see millions of dragonflies as they dance under a reddening sky. And in this way, and in this world, we can all remain strong.
Like the day, the wet season is also drawing to a close. After the hard rains of the last few weeks, softer days of sunlight and a blueing sky return to this land. Of the six seasons, this is Yekke (Yegge), and a time of early morning mists that sit softly on the Spear Grass green land, the mists vanishing in a swift evaporation in the morning sun.
The Arnhem Land bush is at its very best, all glossy and green in the dancing light, the bright blue sky above and the brown, green waters below.
We stand on the rocky and sandy shore and the air is full of a million dragonflies (djalangkarridjdjalangkarridj) and the cycle of life in Arnhem Land begins once more.
There are so many dragonflies in the air around us that you feel a dragonfly collision is an imminent possibility. Although the aerobatics are swift, they know their stuff and weave in and out of each other in a kind of delicate and high-speed ballet. There are many species of dragonfly here, a great jumble of life.
Our Aboriginal friends fish for tonight’s meal in the darkening light. The cooling weather makes the fish scarce so there is not much luck tonight. Three hundred metres away a Saltwater Crocodile drifts slowly by. At a guess about four metres in length, the shape of its great and powerful spear shaped head distinct on the patterned surface of the river’s mouth. This really is a great and nature filled place and it is called Arnhem Land.
The next day the sun rises over wetland where the flooding rivers run clear again, both inviting in their cool sparkle and instantly deadly, knowledge is required here. In the wetlands the water is still and decorated with water lilies, many in bloom.
Here the water reflects the world above. In this end of wet season mirrored world of reflections there are two worlds, one above us, and another below our wet feet.
As we stand in this place, we think about decades past and what connects us here. The answer is in a painting, a bark painting by Mick Kubarkku, a great artist of the rugged escarpment country of Western Arnhem Land. Mick was born in 1925 at Kukabarnka in the wetland region of the Liverpool River. In 1974 we had found ourselves in a distant land, of which we knew little beyond the clichéd nonsense being peddled by its governments of the 1950s and 1960s.
A long way from where we stand now, so it was, that early in 1975 and in a mission shop in Melbourne’s Collins Street we saw the bark paintings of Arnhem Land. A shaft of piercing light, here was a reality and something that really mattered. Here was Australia revealed before us. So in that one work of a Saltwater Crocodile and Barramundi on bark, which we purchased immediately, was opened up a new world and a new knowledge about place and meaning, about life and spirituality, about law and knowledge. So this is why Andrea and I owe Maningrida a deep sense of gratitude for opening up new worlds, once so distant from our own.
And just as many Indigenous people travel the world with their art exhibitions, we decided to follow our own art trail to Indigenous Australia all those years ago. We think back over the years now past and the many travels with Indigenous people on this continent, all of it just amazing.
Before the missions small groups and communities of Aboriginal people lived across Arnhem Land. The people were rounded up put into larger communities like Maningrida (Manayingkarírra) with a population of around 3,500. There are now several language groups in the Maningrida population, Nakara, Ndjébbana, Gurrgone, Kunbarlang, Burarra, Kuninjku (Eastern Kunwinjku), Kune (Mayali), Rembarrnga and Djinang.
Maningrida connects to its 30 outstations, important places for ceremony, keeping culture and art making. The roads are cut during the wet season so we all travel by air or by boat.
So things have changed radically in Arnhem Land over the last hundred years, a kind of ebb and flow of outside interference from governments of left and right. Ideologies and theories about life and how we live in this world, thrust upon an Indigenous world. Our way is better than yours, so this is the new plan. An intervention here, a basics card there, and on and on it goes, special laws and prisons, especially for Indigenous people. Wrong of course and nothing changes in the minds far down south.
What we should all hope for is that Aboriginal people continue to defend their lands in the resilient, vigilant, vigorous, courageous and powerful ways in which they have always done.
In this way, as the day’s end approaches, we will come to see millions of dragonflies as they dance under a reddening sky. And in this way, and in this world, we can all remain strong.
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