Mangkaja Arts

Sonia Kurarra grew up in the river country at Yungngora (Noonkanbah). She used to help the kindergarten teacher with teaching art. They used to take the children out to the Sandy Billabong and teach them how to paint and dance and learn about the ngarrangkarni [Dreamtime] snake that lives in the billabong. His name is Nangurra. Sonia paints the sandy billabong country along the stretch of the Fitzroy River that runs directly behind the community. After the floodwaters recede, there are billabongs that hold a plentiful supply of parlka [barramundi], kurlumajarti [catfish] and bream. She paints gapi [fish], parrmarr [rocks] where the fish is cooked, ngurti [coolamon] and a karli [boomerang]. Sonia is one of Mangkaja Arts leading contemporary artists.

Mervyn Street is a Gooniyandi man. Gooniyandi is one of the two river groups from the country around Fitzroy Crossing. He was born at Louisa Downs Station. Mervyn speaks fluent Gooniyandi as well as English. Mervyn is an accomplished author, illustrator, carver and painter. He has authored a book entitled ‘Know Your Granny’ about his Country and his language. He has also co-produced the book entitled ‘At The River’. Mervyn has used his artwork extensively in the Yiyili School where he teaches his traditional language. Mervyn is an important person for art and culture in Yiyili and Pull Out Springs communities and is the Chair person of Mangkaja Arts.

Taku Rosie Taco King was born at a jumu [soak water] called Payinjarra in the Great Sandy Desert. She walked out from the desert with my husband when she was a young girl. Her husband had two wives, her older sister and herself. They were wearing yakapiri [bush used to make sandals to protect feet from the hot ground]. At Old Bililluna they happened across a plane landing. I didn’t know any English and so I just looked at the kartiya [Europeans]. After that, a motorcar came and took Rosie, her husband and her sister to Moola Bulla. Rosie only spoke Juwaliny when she came out from the desert but today she speaks Juwaliny, Walmajarri, Kriol and English. Rosie has been painting with Mangkaja Arts for a long time.

Nyangarni, of the Walmajarri language group was born at Wanywurtu under a tutujarti [desert walnut] tree. She grew up there with her family of one father, two mothers, one brother and two sisters. There is a rock hole with spring water at Wanywurtu where Nyangarni remembers going walkabout for goanna and pussycat [feral cat]. Nyangarni’s family and other groups migrated north to the cattle station country surrounding the Fitzroy Valley. When they left the desert she was a girl in her early teens. Nyangarni’s beautiful paintings show the traditional waterholes and hunting grounds of the Great Sandy Desert where she and her family lived up until the early 1950s.