Djan'kawu Sisters story: Djarrka (Water Monitor)

This work is attributed to Djapu artist, Mawunpuy Mununggurr (born around 1900 and died 1960). The Melbourne-based anthropologist, the late Professor Donald Thomson, collected this work during his travels across Arnhem Land in northern Australia. It is one of a number of Djapu clan paintings that represent the earliest known depictions of the Djan�kawu Sisters, who travelled across Arnhem Land in the far distant past. The footprints of one of the Djan�kawu Sisters can be seen in the work and this indicates she is travelling on foot across the landscape. The shapes nearby are nuts and berries eaten as she walked. Her body is painted with a very distinctive patterning, and its repetition in the work represents the reflection off her body and onto the ground as she walked along in the sun. As the Sister travelled she plunged the wapitja or digging stick (on the left of the figure) into the ground. The waterhole created at that place is represented by the small central circles and the radiating lines represent the water flowing out of these. Other ancestors like Djanda, the sacred goanna seen on the right, that emerged from these waterholes have special significance.While original documentation for this painting is missing, it has been documented in discussion with senior Djapu men at Yirrkala. It is one of around 70 bark paintings collected by Donald Thomson between 1935 and 1937 and in 1942. A large proportion of these are truly magnificent and important works; and this is without question one of the finest paintings in the Donald Thomson Collection on long-term loan to Museum Victoria from the University of Melbourne.