rock painting sites in the kimberley region

Rock Painting Sites in the Kimberley RegionDescriptions and Copies of the Paintings by Katharina and Andreas

Lommel

An Account of an Expedition by the Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde,Munich, to the North-West Australia in 1955

Contents

Foreword Pages 3 - 9

Preface Pages 10 - 11

Studying and Copying Rock Paintings Pages 12 - 23

The Rock Paintings of North-West Australia - Pages 24 - 25An Outline History of Discovery and Previous Study

The Wandjina Figures Pages 26 - 28

The Small-Figure Rock Paintings in the Bradshaw Style Pages 29 - 30

The Rock Painting Site at Ngungunda Pages 31 - 36

The Rock Painting Site at Molcott Pages 37 - 41

The Rock Painting Site at Aulen Pages 42 - 49

The Rock Painting Site at Wonalirri Pages 50 - 61

The Rock Painting Site at Sundron Pages 62 - 65

Appendix

Journal of the Australasian Universities Pages 66 - 67Modern Languages Association Christchurch, New Zealand, November. 1970

Modern Culture influences on the Aborigines Pages 68 - 80

You can view any of the sections, by clicking one of the titles above

Rock Painting Sites in the Kimberley Region

Forewordby John Robinson

When I was twenty years old, way back in 1955, I worked on GoGo station as a cattledrover in Kimberley, the far Northwest of Australia. In those days the herds of cattle, 300head strong, were walked the 400 odd miles between Fitzroy Crossing and Derby, beforebeing loaded onto ships bound south for Perth to be slaughtered and frozen for exportto England.

After one of these trips, while washing the dust from my throat with a cold beer at the barof the Fitzroy Crossing Hotel, I found myself standing beside the local policeman, P.C.Buster Thorpe. Buster was complaining that he had to leave the following week for a700-mile ride over the Leopold Ranges that separated Fitzroy from Gibb River station. Thecountry was so rough the only way to cross it was on mule back, it being too tough forhorses. The journey would take a month, which was another reason he was upset, as hehad only just got married. I told him that the journey sounded exciting to me, especially asit would be the last mounted police patrol ever made due to a planned road. He said thathe would be glad of some company, as otherwise it would just be him and the black tracker.I would have to provide my own mules, packs and a black tracker to look after the animals.I went to see my boss and he agreed to lend me everything I required in lieu of wages. Sobegan one of the most wonderful adventures I have ever had the good fortune toexperience, an adventure that also introduced me to a chain of events that have enrichedmy entire life. Buster's job was to show the flag of the law to both whites and blacks as werode between the stations north and south of the mountain divide. On top of this he hadbeen instructed to check out a couple of Germans who were copying Aboriginal paintingssomewhere on Gibb River Station.

I kept a diary during the trip and the entry for June 22nd 1955 reads as follows:-

Mt Barnett to Gibb River. ‘...........and came to Snake Creek which we found was dry,

so we postponed lunch and pushed on another five miles to the Hann River, where the

trackers said we were bound to find water. By the time we reached it, we were past

hunger, so after watering the mules we rode on into the Gibb River homestead. Mr

Russ, the owner, was away but his wife welcomed us in and gave us a wonderful supper.

We had been in the saddle for nine hours and ridden some 40 miles over very rough

country, so we and the mules were all whacked. June 23rd. Mrs Russ, who is a half-caste

and has eight children, is a very large woman. She lives out here all alone most of the

time and I have great admiration for her. They have a good garden with bananas and

pineapples. They water from three hand-dug wells with buckets. The timber in the

house is all hand squared and mostly of foot thick beams.



In the afternoon we went in search of the two German scientists, who are studying native

paintings. The paintings are under a mushroom shaped rock, and done in charcoal, red

and yellow ochre, and white chalk. Some of the paintings are snake rain gods and others

look like Astronauts.

The snake paintings are fertility Gods. [p34] The main painting is of a snake coiled around

a little girl. Andreas Lommel and his wife told us that the black fellows believe their souls

are found in water holes and depending on where the baby is born, then that is the child's

country and the place his or her soul will return to when they die. Around the paintings,

which are rain gods [rain comes when you touch them] are several rectangular rocks stood

up in other rocks. These are the original snakes coming out of their holes.’ [p31]

Looking back I can't help but wonder what Andreas and Katharina must have thoughtwhen Buster and myself, followed by our black trackers, rode into their camp. Buster hadpolished up his police badge and was wearing a revolver, so looked very official. It musthave been quite a surprise. Not for a moment did I think that my meeting Andreas andKatharine in 1955 would be repeated in Germany in 1991 and again in 2002.

Andreas listening to the interpretations of the Wonalirrie site in 1955

Photo Katharina Lommel


Once you have visited Kimberley you aretrapped for life by its beauty and remoteness.For three months of the year it is a Garden ofEden although the other nine months arenearer to Hell. In 1981 I returned with somefriends and Peter my son. Then in 1989Damon de Laszlo asked me to take him andhis family. On this trip Margie my wife joinedus along with painter Charles McCubbin andhis wife Pat. It was during this trip that we metGrahame Walsh quite by chance.

In 1990 Robert A. Hefner III with his son Charlesjoined me, and I arranged for Grahame Walshto guide us to some Wandjina sites. Duringtalk around the campfire Grahame not onlyintroduced us to the Bradshaw paintings butalso mentioned Lommel’s name in connectionwith early work done on the Unambal tribe,the painters of the Wandjinas. Grahame couldnot believe it when I told him that I had metAndreas and Katharina in 1955 when theywere studying both the Wandjinas and theBradshaw Paintings on Gibb River station.

A Wandjina figure discovered near Mount

Agnes in 1981 and revisited in 1990

Robert A. Hefner III and John Robinson at a Wandjina cathedral gallery


In 1991 the Bradshaw Foundation was formed and the Trustees viewed some twenty orso Bradshaw galleries by helicopter with Grahame Walsh, in preparation for publishinghis book, the first on these quite amazing possibly 17,000 year old rock paintings.

Why is it important to now publish this collection of all the paintings by KatharineLommel with Andreas's accompanying notes? The reason is that I believe the followingpages will add yet more flavour to the Mysteries of the Kimberley and the Bradshaw Paintings.

Andreas lived with the nearly unspoilt Aborigines of the Unambal Tribe in 1938. Whenhe asked the natives about the Bradshaw Paintings they hardly recognised that theyexisted, saying that they were of no concern to them.

So who did paint these quite amazing images? They are unarguably the best and oldestrepresentations of human beings yet discovered on Earth. Who ever the artists were theyshared the drawing talent of artists as skilled as Albrecht Durer.

In December of 2002 Damon de Laszlo, chairman of the Bradshaw Foundation, visited

the Museum Fur Volkerkunde exhibition in Munich of Katharina Lommel's painting.

He is seen here with one of Katharina's copies of a Bradshaw painting


Katharina painting the Snakes at Ngungunda in 1955

Photo Andreas Lommel


Andreas and Katharina Lommel in 2002 while discussing their Kimberley experiences of 1955

John Robinson with the Wandjina Snake painting that Katharina did at the site

he visited in 1955 with Mounted Police Constable Buster Thorpe


Andreas reminiscing with Damon about his life with the Unambal Tribe in 1938

Only one or two small visible changes since June 23rd 1955

PrefaceRock Painting Sites in the Kimberley Region

This book contains copies of all the paintings that Katharina Lommel did in the environmentsof Gibb River Station in Northwest Australia in the year 1955.

There were two German expeditions to Northwest Australia. The first one was sent out byLeo Frobenius in the year 1937/38. The expedition was led by Dr. Petri, who worked in theGlenelg River region between the long since abandoned Government Station Munya andthe long since abandoned Mission Station Kunmunya.

Our second expedition had the same aim as the first one: copying Aboriginal rock paintings.We worked in the surroundings of the Gibb River Station for six months in the year 1955and copied rock paintings and brought a large collection back to the Staatiches Museumfur VoIkerkunde in Munich.

Leo Frobenius (1873 - 1938) had an institute in Frankfurt on Main and sent out fromthere expeditions in all regions of the world to copy and photograph rock paintings. Hewas one of the main researchers of prehistorical rock paintings. The last expedition heorganised was the one in 1938 to Australia. Here he hoped to still find Aborigines, whohad lived and worked with the paintings and could tell us what the paintings meantto them.

This first expedition had two painters: Agnes Susanne Schulz and Gerda Beck-Kleist. AgnesSusanne Schulz wrote a short report about her work in Northwest Australia: Agnes SusanneSchulz: Northwest Australian Rock Paintings: Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria,

Melbourne, January 1956.

I was a member of this expedition and my report could only be published after the war in1952. Andreas Lommel, ‘The Unambal” was published in English in 1997 by Takarakka

Nowan Kas Publications.

The second German expedition was made in 1955 by me and my wife Katharina. It wasfinanced by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We are both disciples of LeoFrobenius. I studied ethnology with him, my wife Katharina worked for years with him,copying rock paintings in the Middle East, North Africa and finally in Spain in the Altamiracave. Our aim was to copy rock paintings in Australia and bring the copies to the StaatlichesMuseum fur Volkerkunde in Munich. There were two German publications:“Die Kunst des

funften Erdteils”, 1959, and “Die Kunst des alten Australian”, 1988, Prestel-Verlag in

Munchen. There is so far no translation for English readers.


We stayed for six months of the dry season at the Gibb River station. We were invited tostay there because Mrs Russ, the wife of the farmer, a half-caste, remembered me from1938. She was educated at Lombadina Mission and I spent a night there. The other onewho remembered me vividly was Joe, the head stock boy. Joe, a half-caste, was a wonderfulperson. [p13]

I travelled with him widely between Kunmunya and Wandja Station in the Seder and Glenelgriver regions. As a half-caste he was completely integrated in the Aboriginal culture,had two wonderful wives and was everywhere regarded as a very trustful and reliable man.

Mrs Russ had been married to Fred Russ, the station owner for many years. We paid forfood and shelter, horses and donkeys and an Aboriginal guide who led us to the rockpainting sites. Katharina writes of how we worked and lived there in her article: ‘Studyingand copying rock paintings’.


Studying and Copying Rock Paintingsby Katharina Lommel

We had written to a number of stations in the north-western area of the Northern Territorywhere we knew that rock painting sites must exist. The owners either failed to answer atall or flatly refused our request for assistance. The only helpful reply came from Gibb Riverand the Russ family. As it later turned out, the farmer’s wife — an Aborigine woman — hadmet my husband during his previous visit to Australia in 1938, and still remembered himwith affection.


We stayed for six months at the station during the dry season — between the annualmonsoons — and were provided with native guides who knew the places where the rockpaintings were to be found. On horseback, and with mules to carry our camping equipmentand drawing utensils, we rode to the sites, where we stayed for several days or even weeksat a time. The animals were looked after by the natives.

The sites of the paintings we copied were all in the area around Gibb River station. Theirnames are Ngungunda, Molcott, Aulen, Wonalirri and Sundron.

Mrs Russ with some of her children Fred Russ with his youngest daughter

Fred Russ preparing the horses for our trip

All these sites featured paintings in the so-calledWandjina style, showing large horizontalfigures of ‘gods’. These are surrounded bypictures of animals, together with numerousother small paintings which clearly fall intoa separate stylistic category.

(pictured right)

Joe, head stockman, with his little boy



Wandjina style ‘god’


After riding for a day or more through an empty landscape with no sign of human habitation,the visual impact of a rock painting can be quite overwhelming. It is as if an endles past,far beyond the bounds of known history, were staring one straight in the face.

Katharina tracing Wandjina from the rock face


Using lithographic crayon, I traced the paintings carefully onto a special type of foil, thentransferred the traced image onto drawing paper and filled in the colours.

My husband took the photographs for purposes of authentication. In many cases it is notpossible to photograph the paintings exactly as the surface of the stone is generally notsmooth and even, but full of hollows and indentations which the camera cannot capture.We used sticking-plaster to fasten the large sheets of tracing foil to the unpainted parts ofthe rock. Doing this inevitably involved touching the paintings but did no damage.

The Aborigines claim that they, or their ancestors, did not actually paint the pictures butmerely ‘touch’ them, to make rain or ensure better crops, by renewing the colours. Theywere therefore eager to see whether our ‘touching’ would have the same effect. In somecases, a small amount of rain did indeed fall and Mr Russ commented that our work wasevidently good for the grass!

We rolled the copies of the paintings up in stout metal tubes, which had been speciallymade for the purpose, and transported them back to the station by mules.

Katharina transferring tracing to canvas on the concrete floor of the

Gibb River homestead, watched by the Russ children


Our provisions consisted of salted meat, dried apricots, onions and yams from the farm.Little Jerry, the five-year-old son of the Aborigine couple who looked after us, preferredoatmeal porridge with raisins. He was a very intelligent boy, with a thirst for knowledge,and he was learning to read and write with the children, tutored by their mother with theaid of a schools radio programme for outlying areas.

Jerry’s own mother was an incurable leper, living in a hospital many miles away. He wasbrought up by the wife of our guide — “I grow him”, she said — who had no children ofher own.

The guide, whose name was Nipper, was a tall, powerful, good-humoured man whowas also very knowledgeable. His second wife, Djabel, had the self-possessed mannerof a true grand dame. On one occasion in the past, she had been almost killed by ajealous suitor wielding a shovel spear. She could not ride and was unwilling to learn.Instead she was forever on the lockout for edible plants and flowers, or for bees,whose flight patterns told her where to go looking for honeycombs. Little Jerry sat onthe horse’s withers, in front of his father, who tried to initiate him into the mysteriesof tracking.

Tracking is a particular skill of the Australian aborigines. Even on bone-hard ground, theycan glean a great deal of information about the passing of any creature, animal or human,by looking at the exact pattern of the prints in the layer of small stones and, other debristhat covers the earth. The slightest variation in the angle or pressure of the foot can be highlysignificant. Every morning we had a fresh opportunity to marvel at this skill, when Nipperrounded up the animals which had strayed off during the night to graze elsewhere.

We soon realised that our companions were only familiar with the large Wandjina paintings.They were unaware of the smaller figures nearby, which had to be pointed out to them,and even then they were hesitant in acknowledging what they saw.

In Wonalirri we camped inside the cave where we were working. Our water came froma small spring at the base of the rock, which quickly dried up, so that my husband literallyhad to use a spoon to fill the billycan for our morning tea, while fighting off a swarm ofthirsty dragonflies and hornets. Eventually he found another, more reliable water sourcefurther down the valley. On one occasion, the two Aborigines barely managed to preventa dying bull from contaminating the water: fortunately, the animal collapsed just beforereaching the edge of the pool.

In Ngungunda and Molcott the watering-places were somewhat further away. We had toavoid fetching water in the early evening when the cattle came to drink as they were notonly thirsty, but angry and aggressive too. As the dry season wore on collecting waterposed a growing problem.

Wonalirri camp site


In Wonalirri we camped right beside the paintings, while at Aulen we stayed by the river.But in Sundron we had to set up our camp well away from the painting site, which theAborigines held in deep awe. At each site we recorded such paintings as were still visible.I copied the pictures whose outlines were the clearest, the ones which seemed particularlyimportant, and especially the small-figure compositions, after we had realised that theseworks, which our guides had failed to recognise, were the oldest specimens of rock painting.

My husband often had to assist me. Some of the pictures were painted on the undersidesof horizontal rock shelves, while others, such as Star Wandjina and Plum-Tree Wandjina


were between 450 and 600 cm long: in either case, we had to fix the paper in position withadhesive tape and trace the image section by section, pressing the sheet to the rock. Thiscould only be done by working in tandem.

We worked in Wonalirri for three weeks, at the end of which it took our guides fully half a dayto round up the four horses and five mules in preparation for our return. Meanwhile the two ofus packed our things, rolling up the painting copies and stowing them away, in the specially-madeprotective tubes.

Large reclining Wandjina figure

600 x 150 cm

This image of a Wandjina figure carrying a Plum Tree is painted on the ceiling of a large

rocky overhang. The site is evidently a place where trees and plants proliferate. In 1955 the

picture was in a good state of preservation: the lines around the head, the feather decorations

and the feet were all clearly visible. The body is painted in white and shows little interior

detail. From the leaves on the tree it is apparent that the figure received several repaints

sometime ago; in each case, the lines deviate slightly from those drawn by the previous artists.

Snake with three horns

375 x 60 cmThe snake’s elongated body is decorated with pictures of animals, plants and Wandjina

heads. Our guides declined to comment on the painting’s meaning.

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Enlarged images of the Large reclining Wandjina figure and Snake with three horns


The last site we visited was Sundron, partly because it was furthest away from Gibb River.Nipper calculated that the journey would take two or three days. Our departure wasscheduled for the following day. The usual air of calm was missing, everyone was talkingexcitedly, and finally the Aborigines told us about a great flood which had happened notlong ago when a white stockman had been driving his herd past Sundron, continually crackinghis whip. A flood tide had come rushing up the Gibb River, invading everything,including the station. Mrs Russ remembered the flood, and told us it had occurred someten to fifteen years ago.

We rode for two days. Our packs contained only the barest necessities, which meantthat we had no tarpaulin to shield us from the sun. Hopefully the rocks would provideenough shade. By the time we pitched our camp by a small water-hole, night hadalready fallen. The next morning, Nipper said he was going off to look for the paintingsite. All we could see was tall grass, scrub and eucalyptus trees, with no rocks of anysignificant size.

In the evening Nipper returned, exhausted, having failed to find any paintings. The samehappened the next day. On the third day, he asked us for some matches, the idea beingtoburn off the tall grass so that he would be able to see better. The scrub all around ourcamp was smouldering when he came back at nightfall, once again in a state of totalexhaustion. That night, we heard him hallucinating. The following morning he said thatonly a man called ‘Charlie’ could find Sundron, because, as he explained, “It belongs tohim”. We allowed him to ride back and fetch the site’s rightful ‘owner’.

Four days later, Nipper arrived in the evening, accompanied by Charlie. Setting off at daybreak,we rode for about a mile, until our new guide told us to dismount and hitch the horsesto a tree. He would show my husband the way to the rock, but only on foot, and I wouldhave to stay behind as the site was strictly out of bounds to women.

The two of them soon returned. We thanked Charlie and arranged with Nipper that hewould come back in the evening to collect us; the two Aborigines then departed, takingour horses with them.

In the meantime, I had unpacked our working materials. By the evening of the first daywe had finished copying the large painting of the two crocodiles, measuring 230 x 300cm.This left us with plenty of time to study and record details of the colours, in addition totaking photographs and looking for further paintings. Charlie had given Nipper some oldpotato sacks in which to wrap the copies of the paintings before carefully packing themin the metal tubes. He warned us not to follow our normal practice of showing the copiesto other Aborigines on our return; nor, he emphasised, were the pictures to be exhibitedin a cinema.


Large painting of two crocodiles at Sundron

230 x 300 cm

It was as if we had suddenly caught a glimpse of something hitherto concealed from us, whichmight now jeopardise the work to which we had devoted so much effort. For us, too, Sundronbecame a strange, uncanny place. We had to ride there alone, tie up our horses, and return alone.Our Aborigines never left the camp. At night we heard them singing and clapping their music sticks.

Our task was completed.We wanted to set off as early as possible so as to arrive before

nightfall at the water-hole mid-way between Sundron and Gibb River.


This time, Nipper had great difficulty in rounding up the mules, with the result that we leftSundron at midday, when the heat is at its fiercest. Nipper’s nervousness communicateditself to us as well. He kept a particularly close eye on the five mules, one of which was carryingthe copies we had made. He said that if we met up with a herd of wild donkeys, ourpack animals would gallop off with them, and catching them would be impossible.

In the event, there was only one encounter of this kind, and the wild donkeys ran off againbefore their domesticated cousins had a chance to make up their minds about whether ornot to join them.

This time we were continually vexed by the mules, which not only refused to follow butwere forever seeking an opportunity to divest themselves of their heavy burden. Loadingthem up again was a tiresome business, especially in burning heat and under severepressure of time.

It was dark when we reached the small water hole. In the night there was a heavy rain andno shelter and we could not sleep. Our animals remained with us near their packs so wecould start next day very early. On Gibb River station aborigines had heard us coming andwelcomed us back.

A few days later to avoided the wet seasonand continuous rain in the North of Australia,we travelled southward by aeroplane andstarted to work on copying aboriginalimplements, pearl shell and Tjurungas[p75] in the Museums.

Today one can reach Gibb River fromDerby by car. At our time we had no noiseof motors or radios. In the dusk we onlyheard the animals which came to the waterhole. We had only a camp-fire and the starsand at full moon we heard the howling ofthe dingoes.

(right) Bushman wagon with wooden wheels

The Rock Paintings of North-West AustraliaOutline History of Discovery and Previous Study by Andreas Lommel

The Wandjina rock paintings were discovered accidentally in 1838 by George Grey, thesubsequent governor of South Australia. Grey studied the subject in some depth and cameup with two significant, but conflicting ideas. On the one hand, he accorded the paintingsthe status of ‘art’, which was novel in a sense: up to that point, no European had seen these‘primitive’ pictures in such terms. On the other hand, however, Grey refused to believe thatpaintings of such quality could have been made by the Aborigines; instead, he attributedthem to influences from outside Australia — probably, he thought, from Egypt. Today, thisstrikes one as extremely far-fetched: theories of Melanesian or Indian influence wouldseem a great deal more plausible.

The first systematic research on the rock art of Australia was undertaken by DanielSutherland Davidson, a dedicated and meticulous American scholar who spent severalyears studying the tools, weapons and paintings of the Aborigines and published a seriesof maps showing the distribution of specific motifs over the entire sub-continent. Davidsonplaced the study of Aboriginal art on a serious academic footing, leaving no doubt as to hisown high opinion of the artistic quality of the paintings and carvings on the tools, weaponsand shields. (See D.S. Davidson, Aboriginal Australian and Tasmanian Rock Carvings

and Paintings. American Philosophical Society Memoirs, vol. V, “Philadelphia, 1936; and

A Preliminary Consideration of Aboriginal Australian Decorative Art. American

Philosophical Society Memoirs, Philadelphia, 1937).

These paintings and carvings have only recently been accepted as art by Europeans andwhite Australians; to this extent, Davidson was far ahead of his time.

The first full-scale study of the rock paintings of the Kimberley region of north-westAustralia was carried out by the anthropologist A.P. Bikin (1891-1979). Bikin showed howthe process of discovery and research had advanced in several distinct stages, beginningwith occasional finds which had formed the basis of private and local collections, andprogressing via random individual efforts towards the fully-fledged scientific investigationwhich commenced in the mid 1920s.

Since then, following Elkin’s example, many Australian scholars have devoted their energiesto studying rock art. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1948 as a result of an expeditionto Arnhem Land, led by C.P. Mountford, which led to the discovery of the small-figure paintingsin and around Oenpelli. F.D. McCarthy, a member of Mountford’s team, wrote about the cavepaintings of Groote and Chasm islands and contributed a unique series of photographs of the‘string figures’ of Arnhem Land. (See F.D. McCarthy, ‘The String Figures of Yirkalla’).



In 1940 Norman B. Tindale published his map showing the demographic distribution of thevarious Aboriginal ‘tribes’ or clans. He also took a keen interest in rock paintings.

Today, the study of rock art is conducted under the academic umbrella of AURA, AustralianResearch Association. The most recent major survey of the field was published by Grahame L.Walsh (Australia’s Greatest Rock Art. Bathurst NSW, 1988). His book contains a fine selectionof colour plates of the paintings and carvings at the major sites, which are accompanied ineach case by a small map and a photograph showing the site’s general aspect and setting,together with comprehensive bibliographical references.

It was Elkin, too, who made the first attempt to relate the art of the Aborigines to other socalled primitive cultures, on the Asian mainland, in the hope of expanding the parochialhorizons of Australian scholars and persuading them to take note of developments elsewhere,in a monograph titled ‘Aboriginal Man of High Degree’ (Sydney 1945), he compared the‘wise men’ and medicine men of Australia with the Buddhist lamas of Tibet, drawing anumber of parallels between their respective world-views and practices.

The book earned few plaudits. At this point, far too little was known about Asian customsto make such a bold comparison stick, and in any case, the attitude of Australian scholarsto unconventional ideas of this kind was highly unreceptive.

Elkin also smoothed the path for the 1938 expedition to the Kimberley region by theFrobenius Institute in Frankfurt. At the time, the Institute’s director, Leo Frobenius(1873- 1938), was endeavouring to compile a world atlas of rock art. He regarded rockpaintings as the first ‘written’ documents of human culture, and organised expeditions to copythe pictures in Norway, Spain, North and South Africa, the Middle East, and finally, Australia.

This first-over German expedition to north-west Australia amassed an extensive collectionof copies of rock paintings. Only a part of these pictures has so far been published, byAgnes-Susanne Schulz, who made the copies in collaboration with the painter GertaBeck-Kleist (see Agnes-Susanne Schulz, ‘North-West Australian Rock Paintings’, Memoirs

of the National Museum of Victoria, No. 20, Melbourne 1956, pp. 7-57). The othermembers of the expedition, were Dr Helmut Petri, an American by the name of Douglas C.Fox, an Australian, Patrick Pentony, and Andreas Lommel. Schuiz later undertook a furtherexpedition to Australia, this time to Arnhem Land where she mainly copied paintings in theOenpelli area (Agnes-Susanne Schulz, Felsbilder in Nordaustralien. Wiesbaden 1971).

Continuing the work begun in the 1930s, the Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde inMunich sent an expedition to northwest Australia in 1955. The numerous copies of rockpaintings made on this occasion were published in an exhibition catalogue and are nowstored at the museum. (See Andreas and Katharina Lommel, Die Kuast des Pflnften Erdteils

- Australlien. Munich 1959, and Die Kunst des alten Australien. Prestel: Munich, 1988.)


The Wandjina Figuresby Andreas Lommel

The Wandjinas are anthropomorphic figures drawn in rough outline. Some are very crudeand clumsy, but others are executed with a considerable measure of primitive refinement.The natural curves and indentations of the stone are often used to create additional plasticeffects. Wandjinas are generally portrayed in a horizontal position, with the face enclosedby a -shaped border in red or yellow ochre. Only the eyes and nose are painted, themouth is missing. Several mythological explanations have been advanced for the lack of amouth, but the proliferation of competing versions inevitably casts doubts on their plausibility.

Beneath the pictures one often finds skulls, painted in red ochre, with the lower part of thejaw missing. These mark the site of skull burials, at the spot where people found their‘soul-home’. Thus the mouthless faces of the Wandjinas are portraits, as it were, of theburied and painted skulls.

The old men who acted as our guides in 1938 often approached the rock painting sites byan oddly circuitous route. They were obeying the rule that one had to follow the exactpath, including all the detours, taken by the ancestor whose image is painted on the rockand which found its last resting place there. Thus the journey to the site was itself a formof commentary on the mythical memories preserved in the paintings.

The Wandjina paintings are found on the undersides of rock ledges, which shelter themagainst the copious rainfalls during the wet season. The pictures are a vehicle for thetransmission of creation myths. The Aborigines believe that the world originated in whatthey call Lalai the Dreaming — a primordial state which is not confined to the past butstands outside time.

After the Wandjinas were created, they journeyed across the country and shaped it in itspresent form. It was they who made the rain and dug out the rivers, who built the mountainsand levelled the plains. At a time when the stones were still ‘soft’, they built themselves‘houses’ of stone. When they died, they lay down on the soft rocks and left the imprint oftheir bodies on the surface; these marks are the rock paintings which can be seen today.

At the exact spot where they left their ‘shadow’, the Wandjinas descended into the earth;since then, they have lived on at the bottom of the water source associated with each of thepaintings. There, they continually produce new ‘child-seeds’, which are regarded as thesource of all human life.

In the 1930s, the notion that procreation is a function of ‘dreaming’ rather than of the sexual

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act still enjoyed a wide currency among the Aborigines of the Northern Territory. It wassaid that the father of a child had to ‘find’ it in a dream, where it would appear to him inthe shape of his personal totem, usually an animal or a plant. In a second dream act, hewould then pass the child’s “soul” on to his wife.

As befits this view of the origins of life, the Wandjina paintings are regarded as centres ofspiritual and biological energy on which the very survival of the species depends.

Great importance is therefore attached to the annual task of repainting the Wandjinas, andthe accompanying animals and plants, in order to renew the spiritual energies which theseimages harbour.

Until well into the 1930s, the Wandjina paintings occupied a key position in the religiousideas of the Aborigines of north-west Australia.

Big Wandjina figure copied by Katharina

450 x 100 cm

The body of the Wandjina is covered with little Wandjina heads. The figure is surrounded

by numerous pictures of kangaroos and other animals as well as oval figures which

probably mean edible roots of yams. The belief of the aborigines is that a dead ancestor

figure sends out spirits of humans, animals and plants. By touching or repainting the figure

the spiritual powers will be refreshed.


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Enlargement of the Big Wandjina figure copied by Katharina

450 x 100 cm

The body of the Wandjina is covered with little Wandjina heads. The figure is surrounded by numerous pictures of kangaroos and

other animals as well as oval figures which probably mean edible roots of yams. The belief of the aborigines is that a dead ancestor sends

out spirits of humans, animals and plants. By touching or repainting the figure the spiritual powers will be refreshed.


The Small Figure Rock Paintings in the Bradshaw Styleby Andreas Lommel

In the Kimberley region one also encounters small rock paintings of human figures. Theirlocation varies: sometimes they are to be found in the immediate vicinity of the largerWandjina paintings, but sometimes they stand entirely on their own, as if they had beendropped at random into the landscape. Invariably painted in monochrome dark red, the figuresare often shown walking or running, generally carrying a barbed spear or a boomerang.Elaborately coiffured and ornamented, they sometimes appear to be clothed instead of goingnaked. The figures are known as Bradshaws, after their discoverer, J.P. Bradshaw, who publishedan illustrated account of his findings in 1892 (‘Notes on a Recent Trip to Prince Regent River’,

Royal Geographical Society of Australia. Victorian Branch. Transactions. 9(5), pp. 90-103.

The origins of this style of painting are relatively obscure. A measure of outside influencemust be assumed, as the depletion of movement is wholly uncharacteristic of indigenousAustralian art, although the weapons — the multibarbed spear and boomerang — remaintypical. Possibly the external influence was only short-lived.

A small Bradshaw style rock paintings at the Sundron copied by Katharina Lommel

86 x 41 cmA typical Bradshaw painting. Usually the figures of these paintings are represented in

movement. Here we have a later version of the Bradshaw Style. As usual our Aborigines

did not know the picture and they were not interested in it. Katharina copied it and

probably the little dog figure between the two figures on the left side is a later addition.


These elegant little figures have been studied in detail by Grahame Walsh, whose recentbook on the subject contains a wide selection of examples.(See Grahame L. Walsh,

Bradshaws. Ancient Rock Paintings of North-West Australia. Bradshaw Foundation

Geneva 1994).

Instead of being tied to a religious context, Bradshaws are possibly an instance of creativeactivity inspired by purely playful motives. The pictures are painted directly on the rock,using any flat surface available and paying no heed to the question of protection from theelements. Seldom over 60 cm high, the small figures are often found in groups.

In his survey of the subject, Grahame Walsh examines the question of stylistic derivationand priority, pointing out that both types of painting, the Bradshaw and the Wandjina,are often found at the same site. In such cases, the central picture is always theWandjina, with the Bradshaws distributed round about in small niches and alcoves.Sometimes there is an element of continuity between the two styles: this is the case, forexample, in Wonalirri, where the motif of the tree is repeated and varied.

In 2000 Grahame L. Walsh wrote a third book on the Bradshaw paintings.Bradshaws:

Art of the Kimberleys, Takkarakka Mowan Kas Publications.

The Rock Painting Site at Ngungundaby Katharina Lommel

The site is located approximately 3 and a half miles north-east of Gibb River station, on ahill which slopes southwards towards the Ngungunda creek and is bounded on the north-eastby one of the latter’s tributaries. Large numbers of non-venomous snakes inhabit the area,which is regarded as a mythical gathering place for the souls of dead snakes.


On the path leading to the painting, to the eastof the site, one sees, in addition, a pair of large,elongated stones, each of which bears thecarved outline of a snake. Carved in the rockyground by the lower reaches of the creek,south-west of the station, there is also a furrow,some four metres long, with smaller stonesarranged around the edges. There are numeroussimilar stone assemblages in the vicinity of therock painting itself. Lumps of stone resemblingminiature menhirs have been inserted in thecrevices of the natural rock formations; the topend of one has a curved appearance reminis-cent of a snake’s aggressive attitude. Thesemenhirs are located a few metres westwards ofthe painting; a particularly large number of themare also found about 100 metres to the north. Standing stones at Ngungunda

About 80 metres to the south of the painting, a vertical slab of rock set in the earth isdecorated on either side with the abraded outlines of two rampant snakes. The paintingitself is located in a west-facing shelter, formed by a single ridge of rock projecting fromthe side of the cliff. It shows a total of over twenty snakes, juxtaposed in a manner that suggeststhe pattern of a bird’s wing, and accompanied by a single Wandjina, whose abbreviatedbody tapers off into an image of two snakes.


Rock painting site located in a west-facing shelter formed by a single,

ridge of rock projecting from the side of the cliff


Wandjina with snakes

170 x 90 cm

The picture shows a group of over twenty snakes.While the ground and the bodies are white,

the outlines are painted in bichrome combinations of black with red or yellow ochre, or in

monochrome red or yellow. The scaly appearance of the skin is conveyed by neat rows of straight

lines ending in black dots Among the reptiles is a single Wandjina head, whose body tapers

off into an image of two snakes. In 1955 the painting was in an excellent state of preservation.


To the left of the Wandjina head, the paint has been washed away by water seepingthrough the rock. The painting continues on the other side, with the image of a coiledsnake whose abdomen contains a clutch of eggs. On the right is another picture of a snake,this time in a spiral shape, accompanied by a small human figure.

Snake with eggs (left)

106 x 60 cm

This aggressive portrayal was evidently

influenced by the natural contours of the

rock. Its vibrant colours make the painting

impossible to overlook, even when seen

from a long way off. The site is known as a

major breeding ground for non-venomous

snakes. The snakes live under and around

the rock, and did not abandon their territory

even when the expedition set up its tents at

the site. In 1955 the colours — red, white

and black — were relatively fresh.

Coiled snake and human (below)

Adjacent to the painting shown on the left is

a depletion of a coiled snake, accompanied

by a human figure. The work is evidently

new, and the quality is poor; the human

figure appears to be clad in a kind of

night-dress. (Photograph only: no copy made)


The second snake also has a clutch of eggs. In the large snake picture, several smallanthropomorphs are positioned in such a way that the snakes appear to be engorging them.

Set on a white ground, the contours of the snakes are painted in combinations of black withred or yellow ochre, or in plain red or yellow. The scaly appearance of their skin is conveyedby neat rows of straight lines ending at either side in black dots.

The natural sculptural effect of the stone is exploited very skilfully, especially in thedepletion of the spiralling snake on the left, whose visual impact is heightened by its locationin a small alcove. The relative freshness of the colours suggests that the painting in itspresent form is no more than a few years old.

The natives told us that the painting site was a nesting place for Ungud snakes. Like thenatural stone formations in the area round about, the stone arrangements point to the placeswhere the snakes emerge from the underground realm which they are thought to inhabit.

Our Aboriginal companions expressed surprise at the paintings’ excellent state of preservation,while claiming, however, that the pictures had not been there the last time they visited thesite — i.e., the previous year. Since the site had been seen and recorded as early as 1953 or1954, this could not possibly be the case. (See E.A.Worms, ‘Contemporary and Prehistoric

Rock Paintings in Central and Northern North Kimberley’, Anthropos 50, 1955, pp. 546-566.)

However, the contradictory assertion at least made one thing clear: that the painting was newand modern. This conclusion was borne out by the stylistic aspect of the work, which lacksformal clarity, in a less than successful attempt to modernise traditional imagery, the painterhas arranged the snakes beneath the Wandjina into a shape resembling a human shoulder.Close by the watering-place associated with the picture, but on the opposite, southern bankof the creek, are the remains of three further rock paintings. Executed in red on a vertical rockface, these pictures are protected from the rain and sun.

One of these paintings shows an erect human figure with raised hands and slightlybent wrists. Its head is indicated by a plain circle: there is no facial detail. The drawing iscrudely naturalistic.

Adjacent to this is a crouching figure whose body and limbs are drawn in parallel red lines.Again, the head is indicated by a plain circle, but in this case, the eyes and mouth are present,if only in rudimentary form. Little can be said about the third figure, whose outlines are nomore than barely discernible.

The Aborigines had not shown us these paintings, but subsequently admitted that they hadbeen fully aware of their existence, and although they made no secret of the fact that ourdiscovery had upset them, they refused to explain why.


(Standing figure) Painted in red on a vertical rock face near the watering-place at

Ngungunda, this figure stands out very clearly in the landscape. Its feet have only four toes,

an anatomical peculiarity it shares with the spirit figures in the primitive paintings of eastern

Arnhem Land. A further unusual feature of the picture is the fact that the figure seems to

be wearing a kind of hood, so that only its eyes remain visible. Next to the head there is

painted a circle and a semicircle — allusions, perhaps, to the sun and moon?

(Crouching figure) The body of this figure is drawn in parallel lines; the arms are bent at

the elbow, the mouth and eyes roughly outlined. A burst of rays issues from the head. Like

its erect companion, the crouching figure is painted in red. Its aggressive pose is perhaps

intended to disconcert the viewer.

Standing figure

90 x 45 cm

Crouching figure

62 x 48cm

The Rock Painting Site at Molcottby Katharina Lommel

The Molcott site is on a hill that slopes westwards down to a bend in the Hann River. Bythe path stands a single Mushroom-shaped rock with a series of overhangs which protectthe paintings from the elements.


The largest of the paintings, on the south-west side of the rock, is visible from a distance ofup to 800 metres. It shows a group of four (formerly five) snakes, whose bodies are outlinedin yellowish-brown and black on a white ground and filled in with yellowish-brown dots.The eyes are drawn as black patches with a border of ochre yellow interspersed with blackdots; in one or two instances a line runs between the eyes and tapers into the form of aforked tongue. Above the snakes in the centre is a depiction of a small dog. At the edgesof the composition one notices traces of previous paintings which are very similar to thepresent pictures, with the exception that the scaly appearance of the skin is indicated byparallel rows of yellow lines culminating in black dots.

The paintingsite at Molcott

Photograph (1955) showing the layout of the site.The painting, executed on the underside

of a rock shelf and sheltered from the elements, is visible for several hundred metres.


Four Snakes

136 x 135 cm

In a small alcove in the sloping surface of the rock face, is a Wandjina painting, now

faded, which is evidently of older vintage. On the right Katharina is shown copying the painting.

To the right of the main painting are several older pictures, now faded, which alsoappear to be depictions of snakes. Further to the right, in a small recess in the slopingsurface of the rock face, there is a faded Wandjina painting which is evidently of oldervintage. A second painting of this type is to be found on the left of the main picture;here, the only visible features are the snake’s head, and beneath it, can be seen the headof a kangaroo, which was evidently repainted twice on separate occasions. Both of thelatter paintings are executed in an ochre yellow which has faded with age, but one canstill make out the eyes and ears, drawn from a frontal perspective, and the muzzle,which is depicted in profile. The sculptural potential of the rock’s natural contours isexploited to the full.

Close by this painting we found two smaller Wandjinas and a depletion of a kangaroowhich were clearly very new and executed by an unskilled hand. One of the Wandjinas isoutlined in red, the other in yellow ochre. The infill is black, and the ground a bluish white.


Two small Wandjinas and a depletion of a kangaroo

On a vertical rock face near this shelter, one notices trails of yellow and red paint whichwere presumably depictions of snakes, together with a tree-like shape in yellow ochre. Theceiling of the next shelter is decorated with three snakes, two larger examples in yellow anda smaller one in red. These pictures, too, are faded, but the remaining traces are clearenough to differentiate them from the other paintings at the same site. They were evidentlypainted very hastily, and their style dates from an earlier period.

A further shelter contains a total of 27 Wandjinas, crudely outlined in yellow. This grouphas often been photographed, and we decided not to copy it.

The sloping ceiling of yet another shelter features a painting of two echidnas which is evidentlynew and stylistically related to the main painting.

According to the natives, the creature in the main painting is not an Ungud snake but a memberof the venomous, yellow-skinned species known as Bamalu, which has its ‘graveyard’ here.Beneath the picture of the snake with the indentations, one finds a number of cut and polishedstones, signifying that Walanganda created snakes here by cutting their souls out of the rock.


27 Wandjinas outlined in yellow

Two porcupines

95 x 48 cm

The sloping ceiling of a further rock shelter features a painting of two porcupines.


The Wandjinas in the shelter are depictions of Kalaru, who came from the East, cast downbolts of lightning and was then forced to seek shelter from the storm which he himself hadunleashed. The mythical Kalaru had only one eye, and the Aborigines claimed that thisanatomical peculiarity was reproduced in the rock painting, however, this was plainly notthe case.

In 1955 the main picture with the five snakes had evidently undergone recent repainting.On the ground beneath the painting we found several bark palettes, together with lumpsof rock and chewed sticks which had been used to apply the colour. Our guides refrainedfrom commenting on the possible identity of the painter.

The Rock Painting Site at Aulen by Katharina Lommel

The paintings at this site are executed on a vertical rock face running from east to west bythe bank of the Hann River. In the western left hand niche of the rock face, just above thebig white rock, is a faded picture of three Wandjinas.


Vertical rock face at Aulen


Three Wandjinas

Only the heads and shoulders of three Wandjinas are visible, but it remains clear that thefigures are in a standing position, looking out over the river. Their colours — red and yellowochre — have evidently not been retouched for several years. However, the figures do notappear to be particularly old: the Wandjina on the left shows traces of profile drawing,which is atypical and points to modern influences. Above these figures, in a corner of therock face, is a picture of a turtle which is partly washed out and partly darkened with age.


Shaped Snake

About fifteen metres further on, in a natural cave, is a painting of a snake, also very faded;the body is painted red and the head black. Seated on its back is a bird. Three separateversions of the latter motif were painted at different times, and probably in differentcolours, too. While the outlines of the oldest version are now largely obscured, it is clearthat the next painting was executed in dark red and the final version in yellow ochre.Again, skilful use is made of the sculptural qualities of the rock surface.

Recalling fragments of a mythical narrative, the Aborigines told us that the snake’s name isWala. It is a genuine Ungud, and very dangerous. The bird is said to be an eagle.

Our guides knew only of these two paintings and failed even to recognise the otherpictures at the site, which were executed in quite different styles.

S


In his account of his visit to Ngungunda, Sundron and Wonalirri in 1964, I. M. Crawfordsurprisingly fails to mention this site, although it is not far from Gibb River and features oneof the most interesting collections of rock paintings in the region.

The people who ‘belonged’ to the painting were all dead, remembered only by our Aboriginalguide and by a destitute old leper who came to the site and shyly paid his silent respects.

The next picture again shows a snake, but is painted in an entirely different style. The outlinesare drawn in dark red ochre, but the motif has evidently been repainted several times. Thishas been done in such a way that parts of the older drawings remain clearly visible: the linesfollow the approximate pattern of the previous composition rather than exactly reproducingit. The resulting picture is an attractively varied whole with a particularly animated quality.

The snake pictured above has been painted in a different style

100 x 68cm


We could see two reclining figures high up on a part of the rock face which is now inaccessible.Either the rock formation had a different shape at the time when the painting was made, orthe painters must have lowered themselves down on ropes.

The painting shown (below left) in black, found at the base of the rock face, is a fragmentshowing two masked dancers. One can still recognise the elegantly delineated legs of the onefigure and the masked upper body of the other. The disguise seems to consist of bunches offeathers or leaves, after the fashion of the masks which persisted in central Australia untilonly a few years ago: illustrations can be found in, for example, B. Spencer’s variousaccounts of Aboriginal customs.

This almost life-sized figure (below right) was found in a niche in the rock face. Its contours,painted in black, are very faded, but one can still make out the frontally depicted upper body,together with the left shoulder and most of the right arm. The exact significance of the linesnear the right arm is unclear, but they could well refer to a weapon, such as a boomerang. Adecorative band or string runs across the chest from the right shoulder to the left hip. Theright-facing head is portrayed in profile, as well as the chin and somewhat blurred nose, theidentifiable features include a headband and feather.

Two masked dancers Life-size figure


Further up in the rock face is a group of four smaller figures, painted in various shades ofred. The pose of the central figure, coloured a dark reddish brown, suggests the elegantmovements of an accomplished dancer. Depicted frontally, but with its face in profile, itappears to be clad in a loincloth, its thin arms are decorated with bangles.

By contrast, the figures on either side lack any sense of movement. They are shown in profile,and their colours are faded. On the right, the body of the wasp-waisted figure tapersupwards into a tall hairdo, with the hair piled up into a slightly skewed shape.

A meticulously accurate drawing of three double barbed spears runs through the picturefrom top left to bottom right. This rock painting is the most elegant specimen we found.The central figure has been widely imitated. It must be admitted, however, that the twoadjacent figures are considerably less impressive. Although the painting was still clearlyvisible, our guides had trouble in recognising it.

Figures with double-barbed spears


Group of black figures with tall tapering hairstyles

This painting is located some distance away from the others, shows a group of blackfigures with tall, tapering hairstyles. It is a fragment of an earlier, larger composition, mostof which appears to have peeled away, leaving only this small section on a vertical slab ofrock. One can make out the shapes of four figures, three of which are seen in profile whilethe other is depicted in full dorsal view. The latter figure appears to be clothed, and carries a bag.

This picture, on the underside of a small

rock shelf, shows a snake which has evi-

dently been repainted many times. One

also sees the remains of an anthropomorph,

the shadowy outline of a kangaroo — both

of the latter images are drawn in red —

and a spindle-limbed stick figure. A

remarkable feature of the picture is the

combination of different styles, whereas the

portrayal of the snakes follows the conven-

tions of naive animal drawing, the headless

anthropomorph and the kangaroo are exe-

cuted in the Wandjina style, while the stick

figures exemplify the Bradshaw model.

Snake-human-kangaroo drawing

56 x 33 cm

The smooth pebbles littering the floor indicate that a watercourse once ran through thecave. The snake in the picture has been repainted many times in various patterns and layersof colour which are often directly superimposed, the most recent addition being a headlessanthropomorph whose body and limbs recall the style of another drawing found in Aulen.Not far from this figure, one sees the deteriorated outlines of a red kangaroo. One of theolder snake paintings also features a set of small stick figures with an anthropomorphicappearance. The snake, now somewhat weather-beaten, is patterned with shapes thatsuggest scales or feathers.


At the entrance to the cave is a small,animated

figure painted in black. (pictured right)

Although the colouring of this drawingappears quite coherent, the picture clearlycombines several distinct stylisticapproaches: animal drawing, the Wandjinapattern, and — albeit in a somewhat stiffand clumsy version — the Bradshaw style.

Apart from the pictures we copied, and theinaccessible, often faded paintings high upin the rock which we only sketched, weoften noticed residual traces of colourwhich defied identification and were onlyvisible under certain lighting conditions.

To us, the Aulen site seemed like a kind of rock painting gallery, with a selection of picturesfrom a wide range of periods and styles.

Grahame Walsh visited the site in 1988 and managed to unearth a few more fragments oflocal mythology, although he made no new discoveries, and found the pictures largelyunchanged since our visit in 1955.

The Rock Painting Site at Wonalirriby Katharina Lommel

The site consists of a shelter, about 60 metres long and 5 metres wide, in a rock face whichforms the eastern wall of a deep gorge. A stream runs through the gorge and flows into atributary of the Chapman River. The various paintings in the shelter were evidently made atdifferent times. Above the main site, on the rock face, are the remains of a long frieze of figureswith a height of about one metre, but these are now inaccessible and difficult to recognise.


Wonalirri general over view

The main picture in the cave is divided between the vertical rear wall and a horizontal rocksurface. It shows a Wandjina, about seven metres in length, bearing a ‘tree’ slung over hisleft shoulder. This, according to the Aborigines, is a species of plum tree. The nameWonalirri is said to be a derivative from a type of edible flower.

The Wandjina wears a head-dress of two cockatoo feathers. On its body was a depletion,already exfoliated, of a wildly animated human figure. The painting of the Wandjina is old, andparts of it have peeled away. The leaves on the tree show traces of earlier paintings; here,one notices that the older drawings are somewhat different from their present-day counterparts.

Large reclining Wandjina figure

600 x 150 cm

This image of a Wandjina figure carrying a Plum Tree is painted on the ceiling of a large

rocky overhang. The site is evidently a place where trees and plants proliferate. In 1955 the

picture was in a good state of preservation: the lines around the head, the feather decorations

and the feet were all clearly visible. The body is painted in white and shows little interior

detail. From the leaves on the tree it is apparent that the figure received several repaints

sometime ago; in each case, the lines deviate slightly from those drawn by the previous artists.

Detail of the large reclining Wandjina figure



On the right-hand side, under the Wandjina' s body just at the point where the horizontalsurface intersects with the vertical rock face are nine smaller Wandjina heads which seemalmost to stare at the approaching visitor. Beneath these heads, painted on a stone, is astrikingly naturalistic depiction of a snake, together with an anthropomorphic figure.

On the vertical wall is a second large Wandjina. Its body faces leftwards, and it, too, wearsa pair of cockatoo feathers on its head. In front of the figure, set on a white ground, thefaces of three further Wandjinas are interspersed with pictures of various flora and fauna.The body of the central figure is also decorated with a total of eight Wandjinas, accompaniedby a further set of plant and animal decorations.

The ceiling of the cave features a ‘devil’ figure,a semi-human creature whose face consistsof a plain circle bisected by a vertical line.Beneath the large Wandjina on the rear wallis a picture of a snake, facing left with itsbody at full stretch. It has two eyes and threehorns, and its tail displays a pattern of scalesor feathers. The body is decorated with sevenWandjina heads and a loose arrangement ofother motifs: plants, animals and footprints.

Devil figure (pictured left)

24 x 19 cm

a small painting of a Djanba or evil spirit.

Kangaroo tracks

21 x 23 cm

The pattern of marks resembles kangaroo

footprints. However, this interpretation

is contradicted by a myth according to

which the deceased, on entering the

kingdom of the dead, hang their feet

up on a string; the feet are then trans-

formed into bats (see the publication

Lommel, Die Unambal - Ein Stamm in

Sudwest-Australien).

Near the end of the tree-trunk in the large Wandjina picture is a second image of a devil.Originally painted in black, the picture is now largely faded, but its quality was probablypoor to begin with. Next to this one notices an arc-shaped line, patterned with markingsthat resemble the tracks of a kangaroo.


To the right, diagonally opposite, is a small picture of a dancing figure wearing a head-dressof uncertain type: it could consist of a feather, a bundle of twigs or a small tree. Beneath thelatter figure is an unidentifiable painting of a circular form with a pattern of rays emerging fromits upper and lower sections, accompanied by what seems to be a drawing of a tree.

Dancer with tree and "sun"

Height 46 cm

This small figure, also shown wearing a head-dress in the form of a plant, is dancing around

a small tree and an object, shaped like the sun, which the Aborigines described as a yam.

Four snakes

320 x 66 cm

Four snakes with their tails tangled up in a spiral, and theirheads,

facing rightwards, arranged in a staggered vertical row.


The ‘Dancer with tree and sun’ painting is followed by a painting of four snakes. The tails aretangled up in a spiral, while the four right-facing heads are arranged in a staggered vertical row.


Female figure with snake's body and plant decorations

260 x 100 cm

Here, the oldest layer of colour in the lower section of the painting is a picture of a giant purple

snake, merging into a crudely drawn human figure with outstretched arms and two darker

patches on its upper body which the natives interpreted as female breasts. The long neck is

surmounted by a diminutive round head with large eyes outlined in white. A vertical white line,

hinting at the shape of a nose, runs through the centre of the mouthless face. The figure carries

two bunches of plants, now barely recognisable; the straight lines running down from its arms

symbolise rainfall. The longstemmed plants above the body of the large snake are water plants,

although the Aborigines also interpreted them as yam leaves or tubers. In the background one

can still see the faded remnants of several earlier paintings with the same motif. Amid the

tangle of vegetation is a series of cloudy white forms, like will of the wisps. The red stem connecting

all the plants rises vertically towards a point where the rock has crumbled away, obliterating

what was probably once a painting of a large star.

Above the snakes painting, also on the vertical wall, is a human figure with uplifted arms whichare slightly bent at the elbow. Painted in red, the image is old and deteriorated. The face consistsof a circle, with two eyes and a vertical line denoting the nose. The figure is wearing some kindof head-dress made of feathers or bunches of leaves which hang down lopsidedly. The palms ofits hands appear to be open, and long, tassel-shaped adornments dangle from its elbows. Itsbody gradually merges into the form of a red snake, which continues to the left as an undulatingline. The space above is filled with decorative bands of leaves and misty white dots. Twodarker patches above the figure were interpreted by the natives as depictions of female breasts.

Female figure with snake's body and plant decorations

260 x 100 cm

The natives could offer no information on the latter picture, although they remembered the name of the figure, which they

called Kolandjii. The photograph shown on the next page, taken by Jutta Malnic in 1982, shows that a devil figure was added

at a later date. Roc

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Comparison Photo

The top photopgraph was taken by Andreas Lommel 1955, and is shown here with a 1982

photograph by Jutta Malnic (below), which shows that a devil figure was added at a later date.



Bradshaw painting - Figure with headdress

66 x 18 cm

The natives were unaware of this small figure, an example of the late Bradshaw style,

which was found in the vicinity of the Wonalirri site. Its more striking features include a

tightly belted waist, an extravagant hairstyle and a feather head-dress so large that the

head itself is obscured. In its right hand the figure carries a pair of boomerangs and a

barbed spear -- with a tip of the older, wooden kind later replaced by stone -- while its left

hand clutches a woomera, a throwing-stick of the type found throughout Australia.

There is a small rock painting site further down the same valley at Wonalirri site 2, but onthe other side of the gorge. On a slab of rock is an engraving of a snake, identical in formto those found at Ngungunda. In a small shelter we found a painting of a male figure. Itsbody is depicted in front view, but its head is turned to the left, while its hair is piled upinto a long, tapering shape which slopes to the right.

Above its head is a red patch which may be a feather head-dress, but the precise significanceof the shape is uncertain, in its right hand the figure clutches two boomerangs and a barbedspear; the hooked shape on the left refers to a woomera or spear-thrower. The figure standsapproximately 60 cm high. Its outlines are completely filled in with red pigment.

Crawford tried to find this painting again in 1967. He happened to have a copy of our catalogueDie Kunst des Funften Erdteils with him, and showed the relevant illustration to hisAboriginal guides. They interpreted the figure as a grasshopper, despite its obviouslyhuman form, and were unable to recognise the boomerangs and the spear.

On the left of the large Wandjina are several small pictures of human figures, possiblydancers, which are distributed seemingly at random over the rocks. The head-dressesappear to consist of bunches of foliage or miniature trees. Stylistically, these pictures aredifficult to categorise.

Small figure (pictured right)

27 x 11 cm

Above this earringed figure is an arc-shaped

band which may be some form of head-dress.

In its right hand, the figure carries a

boomerang. The feet are denoted by

rough lines of light colour. The tightly

nipped-in waist is similar to previous

photo and recalls the appearance of similar

figures at Aulen and Sundron.

At Wonalirri site 4 on a smooth rock faceabove the main site, in the same valley buton the opposite side, are two further paintings.One of a group of small, slender human figureswith arc-shaped bands extending abovetheir heads, and the other showing a numberof dancers, depicted in frontal view, whoappear to be clutching bundles of twigs.(P.60)



Four Bradshaw figures with spear clusters. Painting by Katharina

Three dancers

Height 31 cm (approx.)

Crudely drawn in broad bands of colour, were probably made by finger-painting. The elongated

shape and lack of anatomical detail heighten the overall impression of monumentality.

Dancer with head-dress

Height 24 cm


Dancer

Height 20 cm

(Above left) The remnants of a further arm

at the left-hand edge of the picture indicate

that this male figure originally formed part

of a larger group. Again, the idea of dancing

is suggested by the position of the arms,

which are bent at the elbow.

(Above right) shown in a state of semi-restrained

motion, this dancer, wears a flamboyant

head-dress which can be interpreted as a

plant, a bunch of leaves, or a tree - a

reprise of the plant theme associated with

the large reclining Wandjina and the

‘plant-woman’.

Hand and man with sausage (pictured left)

31 x 15 cm

The Rock Painting Site at Sundronby Katharina Lommel

The Sundron site lies north of Gibb River farm, at the western most fringe of a range of hillsrunning on an east-west axis. It is close to Bella Creek, a tributary of the Hann River. Thepainting covers parts of the ceiling and rear wall of a west-facing shelter, it shows two crocodiles,one facing right and the other left. Both reptiles are outlined in yellow ochre and red on awhite ground. Below one sees a number of small crocodiles, together with several humanfigures which are presumably destined to be devoured by the reptiles.


General view of Sundron

Close up view of Crocodile shelter


Between the two crocodiles is a cockatoo, perched on the back of a snake. Near the bird,and again on the left side of the picture, are several crude drawings of anthropomorphs,done in black earth, which were added at a later date. The two large crocodiles are visible froma distance of up to 80 metres.

Our guides attributed the two crudely drawn black figures to a near-blind old man whomwe had already seen on a previous occasion at Aulen, when he visited the painting site,quietly ignoring our presence.

Large painting of two crocodiles

230 x 300 cm

The two crocodiles are outlined in yellow ochre and red on a white ground. Below the

main motif are a number of smaller crocodiles and human figures; the latter are pre-

sumably at risk of being devoured. Between the two large crocodiles one sees a bird,

identifiable as a cockatoo, perching on the back of a snake. Also on the left side of the

picture are several crude drawings of anthropomorphs, done in black earth. These

were said to have been made at a later date by an old leper who occasionally visited

the site.

The site was visited by Crawford in 1963. Grahame L. Walsh tried to find it again in 1989but was unable to do so because Charlie Numbulmore, who acted as our guide, and alsoaccompanied Crawford, had died in the meantime.


A small cave nearby, at the foot of the hill, contains an old and weather-beaten painting ofa Wandjina. This picture is significant in two respects: firstly, the arc-shaped band aroundthe head is unusually narrow, being no wider than the outlines of the body, and secondly,the ‘rays’ or ‘hair’ are considerably longer than the norm.

Deteriorated Wandjina painting (pictured left)

This old and largely deteriorated painting

of a Wandjina differs considerably from

other pictures featuring the same motif.

The arc-shaped band around the head is

no wider than the outlines of the body,

and the ‘rays’ or ‘hair’ are longer than

usual. The painting was unknown to the

natives, and was only discovered by

chance, when one of the Aborigines spoke

of a dream in which he had seen ‘child-seeds’

entering the cave.

Some distance away, on a steep but relatively low rock face, is a sketch of four humanfigures. Drawn in red, the diminutive figures are old and faded, but the casual eleganceof the draughtsmanship is still very striking. This painting is evidently unconnected withthe painting of the crocodiles.

Next to the figures is a childish drawing of a dog. According to local mythology, a groupof crocodiles once journeyed up the Durack River, travelling in a south-westerly direction.On the way, they became involved in a fight, and one of them was killed and even todayhis grave is still marked by an oval-shaped pile of stones about three miles north-westof the rock painting. Some of the other crocodiles left their ‘shadow’ at the painting site,while a further group travelled on to the Phillips Range.

Although the Aborigines said little about the painting, it still held a very definite significancefor them, and they were clearly afraid of it. We were told that a stockman drivingcattle near the site had once cracked his whip too loudly. This annoyed the crocodilesso much that they caused a great flood, completely swamping the area around theGibb River.

Visiting the site posed us major problems. The Aborigines stubbornly resisted the idea,using all manner of subterfuge, and even when we had overcome their objections,they insisted on taking a whole range of intricate precautions before approaching anyof the paintings.


Our guide was unable to find the painting. After strenuous but fruitless attempts to uncoverit by burning off the scrub round about, he was taken ill with a fever and fell into a state ofdelirium. We had to persuade another man, who ‘belonged’ to the picture, to lead us to it.He complied with our request but promptly disappeared after we arrived at the site, whichevidently filled him with awe.

In general, women were forbidden to see or ‘touch’ the painting. The only females allowednear it were those deemed to be ‘close up dead’ - in other words, old. This apparentlyincluded Katharina.

Unlike in previous cases, we were not allowed to spread the copy of the painting out onthe cement floor of the homestead which offered the advantage of an even surface andcontinue working on it. Instead, we were told to keep it rolled up in one of the specialmetal containers we had brought with us.

We also had to promise the Aborigines not to show the copy to anyone, until we were onour own ‘station’, when we arrived back home.

Journal of the Australasian UniversitiesModern Languages Association, Christchurch, New Zealand, November. 1970

Extracts from a Review by T.G.H.Strehlow, University of Adelaide

FORTSCHRITT INS NIGHTS

Andreas Lommel

Zurich. Atlantis Verlag, 1969

DR Lommel first visited north-western Australia as a member of the 1938 FrobeniusExpedition. The party's researches were concentrated mainly on three tribes in theKimberley Division the Ungarinyin, the Worora, and the Unambal who were then living, inLommel's words, “in almost every imaginable state between undisturbed original culture andcomplete absorption”. Towards the end of their stay members of the party receivedglimpses of the Kurangara cult which was at that time being introduced from the interiordesert regions.

English readers will find the 1938 scientific material gathered by Lommel published in theanthropological journal Oceania 1949 and 1950. After World War II Lommel, now Directorof the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich, returned to his former field, accompanied byhis wife, Katharina Lommel. The latter, a gifted artist, was responsible for the fine copiesof aboriginal rock and bark paintings and decorated objects, and the excellent designs andtext illustrations, which made their joint volume Die Kunst des alten Australien (1989) oneof the most beautiful books ever produced on the aboriginal Australian art forms.

These publications contain all the scientific information and details of field work (alsomost of the illustrations) on which Lommel's latest book has been factually based. Butwhereas Lommel in his earlier writings had shown that he could evaluate aboriginalAustralian culture in the terminology of a critical ethnologist, and discuss, in cold sociologicalterms, the aboriginals as members of a dying social order undermined by Europeanculture contact, ‘Fortschritt ins Nichts’ reveals a wholly new author: a European capableof responding with deep emotion to the aesthetic properties of the aboriginal art forms,filled with warm human understanding for the plight of dark men and women, whoseway of life and social order, beliefs and economic activities, culture and languages, wereall collapsing in a matter of a few decades after they had lost their rights to a land whichhad been theirs for thousands of years. The clear-headed scientist responsible for the 1938expedition account in 0ceania had become, in 1969, a warm-hearted humanitarian, with thesensitivities of an artist and a poet. His very style, too, infused now with deep emotion,had undergone, as it were, 'a sea-change into something rich and strange'.



Some passages in Fortschritt ins Nichts are among the most sensitive pieces of writing yetdone about the Australian scene and its people. A single sentence suffices to sum up theimpression made upon a European artist by the sign of one of the huge Wandjina paintingsin the north-west; 'From the horseshoe-shaped outline, the mouthless face, the eyes werelooking down upon us earnestly: here the soul of past millennia was gazing out of thepainting.' Again, there is deep pathos in Lommel's description of old men's visits to thescenes of their youthful wanderings; ‘The old, lonely, solitary wanderers, who cannot bringthemselves to accept food relief from the stations, and prefer to die there slowly, traverse,sick and hungry, the land of their fathers. They continue their attempts to freshen the outlinesof the rock paintings, in accordance with tradition. Their tortured, trembling lines can stillat times be discovered on the rocks: the colours are still fresh’. Similarly the strange, andsometimes crude (to European minds) marital institutions and sexual habits of the darkAustralians, which had been described with cold exactness in the Oceania articles, are treatedwith deep understanding in ‘Fortschritt ins Nichts’ : here, without changing the factual details,Lommel shows how love, loyalty, jealousy, and murderous anger used to fill the love-lives ofthe dark men and women in this region, and impel them to passionate action just as similarfeelings have motivated human beings everywhere since the dawn of human life.

Occasional inexactitudes of detail need not worry a reader looking for an accurate generalpicture of aboriginal society. Here he will find a community of living men and womenattending to their daily chores, both new and traditional, and still drawing emotional satisfactionand spiritual strength from the religious ties linking the visible world of their senses withthat supernatural world which was fused so intimately with their everyday experiences.Aboriginal religion was based on a belief in the existence of indivisible, personal ties linkingmen, nature, and the supernatural beings. Lommel gives many convincing pen sketches ofliving figures (for instance, the 'poet Allan'): these are far removed from the nameless shadows,vaguely labelled 'informants', that are normally mentioned by the anthropologists.

‘Fortschritt ins Nichts’ indicates Lommel's conviction that all European-Australian efforts to‘assimilate’ the remnants of the indigenous dark population into white society can terminateonly in disaster for the latter.

He rightly emphasises the decline of the full-blood population, which had reachednear-genocidal proportions by 1938. He believes that in the end nothing will survive of thelanguages, the legal norms, the social institutions, or the religious beliefs of the dark folk.

Modern Culture influences on the Aboriginesby Andreas Lommel, Oceania, September 1950

AS a member of the Frobenius Expedition sent to Australia in 1938, I had the opportunityto collect some data about the influence of modern culture on the life of the aborigines inthe Kimberley Division in north-west Australia.

In Australia the influence seems to be mainly a psychological phenomenon. Psychologicalchanges can be distinguished before any change of the material culture has taken place,and even after the beginning of material acculturation the consequences of the influenceof modern culture on the psychological sphere seem to be more significant for the processof acculturation and assimilation.

As is generally known, the Australian aborigines have almost disappeared from the southernpart of the continent. A demographic record of the year 1933 gives the number of thenatives of Australia as 80,710, of whom 60,101 are recorded as fullbloods; 36,000 of theseare still living as nomads, whereas 23,000 live in a semi-civilised state in the surroundingsof white settlements.

Our research was concentrated mainly on three tribes in the Kimberley Division : TheUngarinyin, the Worora and the Unambal. In the territory of the first tribe are theGovernment Station, Munja on the bank of the Walcott Inlet and one station on the SaleRiver. The second tribe lives concentrated in the vicinity of the Kunmunya Mission. TheUnambal inhabit the country farther north between the Prince Regent River and CapeVoltaire. With the exception of an old and solitary dingo-trapper south of the Prince RegentRiver the Unambal had no white settler in their territory, but they frequently visited theKunmunja Mission.

The members of these three tribes lived in almost every imaginable state between undisturbedoriginal culture and complete absorption. There were at least in the year 1938 still a fewolder individuals who had never seen a white man and who knew of modern culture onlyby hearsay, but they all had occasionally seen a plane circling over their country. On theother hand, there were individuals at their station and the mission who had lived theresince their childhood and worked as stockboys and common labourers. In the small coastaltowns, Broome and Derby, aborigines and some half-castes worked as car-drivers and inshops. They were completely absorbed in modern culture and had no contact with theirfellow tribesmen in the hinterland; but they exerted a strong influence on the occasionalvisitors from Munja and Kunmunya.

There were, of course, numerous states between those extremes, but generally three groups


could be distinguished in the Kimberley Division. There were aborigines living in contactwith modern culture on the farm, the mission and the Government Station. These men,stockboys and station-hands, wearing European clothes, had preserved fragments of theirlanguage, but apparently little else. Their model was the American cowboy as they knewhim from Wild West films in the open-air cinemas of the coastal towns. They were unableto live and nourish themselves in the bush and had never learnt how to hunt kangarooswith spears or how to collect edible roots.

A second group lived as only temporary workers on the station. Its members knew modernculture by contact, and they appreciated sugar, tea, tobacco and blankets. Half of the yearthey lived in the bush as nomadic hunters like their ancestors, their economic life beingenriched only by a few matches, tools and clothes. They found themselves in a transitionphase and were the connecting link with the third group. This last was very small. It consistedof some shy, timid, and mostly older, individuals who hid themselves carefully in therugged hinterland and avoided contact with modern culture. Economically, they keptcompletely to the frame of their old nomadic culture; they used weapons of wood andstone, and preserved a Stone Age way of life.

Even so the impact of modern culture made itself strongly felt in the third group. Theseindividuals who had never seen a white man were irritated and frightened by the rumoursthey heard about him and his devices. Of these they knew the plane and, when living nearthe sea, also the strange spectacle of a lighted steamboat passing by at night. As their economiclife remained unchanged, the influence of modern culture was restricted entirely to thepsychological sphere but was strong enough to change their life considerably.

Their economic conditions were favourable: kangaroos were abundant everywhere. TheGovernment regarded the country, which was of little use to white men, as a sort of nativereservation, and generally prohibited visiting adventurers, traders, and possible settlers fromentering it. Thus, contact could take place in an exceptionally friendly way at the missionand the two stations, and those who preferred to remain in the hinterland could remainthere unmolested.

We had the opportunity to know for months members of all the three groups, those of thethird group belonging to the Unambal exclusively and to converse with them with the helpof indigenous interpreters and to become acquainted with their way of life. Everywhere theresult of the slightest contact seemed to be a falling birth-rate and a disintegrating socialorganisation. In spite of favourable economic and hygienic conditions in the KunmunyaMission, the decline of the birth-rate was evident even here. Social organisation was totteringalso among the Unambal, who were the least influenced by contact with white men.

A few individuals of this tribe were living almost isolated from the rest, old and childless.Only on a special occasion did they emerge from the hinterland and join their fellow tribesmen.


Such an occasion was the arrival of a new secret cult, into which the men of the Unambaltribe had to be initiated. This cult was in full bloom among the Ungarinyin as well as theWorora, whereas only a few Unambal men had been initiated so far. As I studied this cultafter having been admitted myself, I had the impression that besides reviving old traditions,it was a synthesis of the aborigines’ old mythic conception of the universe with new elementsbrought in, that it was an attempt to assimilate modern culture in a genuine way, and thatin this attempt the men of different stages of contact were united. Thus, besides the fallingbirth-rate and the disintegrating social organisation, this cult seemed to be the most interestingphenomenon resulting from the contact situation.

Wherever a closer contact takes place, a falling birth-rate may usually be ascribed tointroduced diseases or declining economic conditions. But here, things could not beexplained that way. It appeared that the news of modern culture alone was sufficient todestroy the aborigines’ concept of the universe. All these rumours about the white menwho looked pale like the spirits of the dead, of their ships, motor-cars and aeroplanesseemed to disturb these primitives deeply and produce a remarkable effect on theircultural and biological existence.

Psychic conditions seem to effect their physical well-being far more than we would considernormal. The aborigines maintain that, if we translate in our own terminology what theysaid, their reproductive abilities depend not only on their physical well-being but on theirpsychic balance as well. Many conversations with aborigines suggested that rumours andtales of modern culture, as well as a merely superficial contact with it, destroy not only theirconcept of the universe but also upset their psychic balance enough to diminish theirreproductive abilities. The missionary of Kunmunya, the late Rev. J. B. Love, who hadconcentrated around his mission almost the whole Worora of over 200 persons, clearly sawthat it was dying out fast : only about one-tenth of the whole population was under 20 years.

There were, however, no discernible material reasons for this state of affairs. Economicconditions were excellent and the mission kept a close eye on sanitary conditions. Themissionary talked things over with the men and several times did so in my presence. Itbecame clear that the aborigines regarded a special psychic disposition, which theycalled a ‘dream,’ as the cause of pregnancy.

Intimations to have more frequent intercourse with their wives remained meaningless tothem. There, in the mission, the problem of ignorance of physical paternity did not exist.The physical facts had been brought to their knowledge by discussions with white persons,but still they regarded those facts from a different point of view. To them the physical actof generation was more or less insignificant ; the accent was on a psychic condition a‘dream’ which they regarded as being of biological importance concerning their procreativedisposition. Men of the hinterland who had almost no contact with whites referred to those‘dreams’ as the one and only, or at least the main, reason of paternity.


Those who had talked about these questions with white persons frequently still insisted onthe ‘dream’ as indispensable but admitted that intercourse had also a function. Moreover,they always were ready to state that things might be quite different amongst white personsand animals.

These ‘dreams’ involve all the mythical and totemic ideas. The first and creative beings oftheir Genesis transformed themselves, ‘dreaming’ again and again, into the animals andplants, which they were creating. One of these beings is a mythical snake called Ungud,which represents the water. From that snake originates an anthropomorphic calledWandjina, representing rain and fertility. In the depth of wells, which resist the heat of thesummer, these two beings are incessantly creating so-called ‘spirit children’, souls ofchildren to be born.

To beget a child a man has to find such a soul or ‘spirit child’ first. He finds it in a particulardream in which the name of the spirit child, containing the vital essence of the future child,comes to his conscious mind. The aborigines maintain that to make such a ‘dream’ possiblesleep must not be too heavy. The name of the ‘spirit child’ goes first to the heart of thedreamer and later into his head; he then is thinking like a white man, that is, he becomes fully conscious of the name. A man lacking strength either in his heart or in his head cannotkeep the name and therefore cannot pass on that ‘spirit child’ to his wife. He then is incapableof begetting a child and will try to borrow a spirit child’s name from a medicine-man.

The aborigines declare that such ‘child-dreams’ have become very rare to-day. Those whowork on stations say that heavy work exhausts them so that their sleep becomes too heavy.They cannot catch the name of the ‘spirit child’ any more. Those of the hinterland say thatall their dreams are too much troubled by visions of the white man, of aeroplanes andships. So they always dream of these things and have no ‘child dreams’ any more.

Taking into account the extraordinary sensibility of the aborigines, we may assume that forphysical paternity a psychic disposition might well be indispensable for them, and we mayas well consider it as justified their reasoning about the causes of their falling birth-rates.The disturbance caused by approaching modern culture by direct contact or even byrumous may be sufficient to upset their emotional balance in such a degree that the psychicdisposition necessary for the physical act of generation will not be attained any more.

In a similar but less distinct way modern culture may act on other primitive peoples, whereasreasoning may not be as clear as in this case. All the aborigines are inclined to regardmisadventures and accidents as the result of some magic action against them. The psychologicaltreatment of maladies or injuries is more important than the medical one. The magicalaction of the possible enemy has to be counteracted by the magic of the medicine-man.

A group lives under the same fear as the individual. For instance, lack of success in hunting


during several consecutive days may lead a group to believe itself to be the victim of anevil spell. Heavy depression and apathy will render it incapable of any further action. Herethen the medicine-man’s function begins. He will sing magical songs with the men for awhole night and hypnotise them into a cheerful and self-reliant mood. The psychicpre-disposition of the aborigines makes the medicine-man a necessity. He is the centre oftheir social organism. He keeps this position even at the stations or the mission: there lifeoffers so many puzzling questions that the spiritual leadership by a strong character is asnecessary as in the bush. But a genuine medicine-man may be helpless in this new andstrange atmosphere.

Thus he sometimes is replaced by a younger man who speaks some English and is experiencedin the ways of the whites. This advantage, however, may be paid for by a loss of thosesubtler qualities which distinguish a real medicine-man. It is not personality alone thatmakes a medicine-man; tradition and circumstances require that he should undergo certainspecial psychic experiences in order to be able to act. These alone guarantee the qualitiesnecessary to himself and to his fellow tribesmen, and it is here that the influence of the culturemakes itself felt: the psychic experiences which give a medicine-man his power are nomore attainable because the whole psychic atmosphere of the natives is disturbed.

Further, as soon as the medicine-man loses the ability to function as the centre of thesocial organism, the organism dissolves. The psychic experiences were described to usvery exactly and mostly referred to as ‘dreams’. Informants were both older and youngermen. Some of them claimed to have had these experiences themselves, others modestlyadmitted that they related experiences of others only. One Unambal and one Worora maninsisted on having undergone those experiences themselves and related the ‘dreams’ intheir own version.

The decisive experience or ‘dream’ is preceded by many others which are regarded as agood omen. In them the dreamer sees himself back to his origin, in the water. He seesmany appearances, which are related to water, as water plants and trees growing at theriverside. The decisive experience may plunge the dreamer in a sort of coma, which maylast for several days. During this the dreamer feels as though he were diving into thedeepest water. There he communicates with the first creative being: the Ungud-snake, whoendows him with special psychic powers. After these psychic experiences, a new medicine-manis for some time the disciple of some older ones who teach him the practical tricks of theroutine work. Then he is regarded as ready.

The decisive experiences are described as follows : The soul of the man who is going to bea medicine-man goes away from him. His body is lying there asleep. It is a heavy sleep,and nobody dares to wake him up even if this sleep should last for several days. The soulgoes far away to the place from whence it originated. There in the depth it finds a brilliantlylighted cave in which two snakes are copulating and incessantly engendering ‘spirit children’.


Many of them unite with the soul of the dreamer who thus becomes richer and stronger inpsychic powers than common men. Other descriptions speak of a medicine which the manreceives in the depth. It is believed that this looks like transparent crystals. They penetrate him through his shoulder, his navel or his penis. The strength which is given is then locatedin his belly.

The descriptions of the decisive experiences never differentiate between physical and thepsychic existence. Generally the aborigines speak of how 'he' dives into the water, receivesthe medicine and rises to the surface of the water again. Only after very exact questioningit becomes clear that the body is lying asleep on the ground, whereas ‘he’ means the soulwhich goes down to meet the Ungud-snake. For the aborigines there is no differencebetween an experience during a dream and an experience in real life. Both spheres havethe same reality, and they are unable to separate them.

We may call this decisive experience a communication with the subconscious. The efficiencyof the medicine-man depends on his ability to communicate with his subconscious wheneverhe wants to do so. As soon as the psychic balance of the aborigines is disturbed, the abilitiesof the medicine-man seem to vanish and he is unable to function. If the disturbance is deepenough, the development also of new medicine-men may be precluded.

It seems impossible for the younger generation to attain the necessary decisive psychicexperiences which make a medicine-man. There are other psychic experiences whichbelong to the traditional abilities of a medicine-man. At present these seem to become rareevents, whereas in normal times in the past they seem to have been rather common. ‘Flying’ isone of these experiences.

The medicine-man is believed to be able to send his soul away over long distances. Thesoul sees everything that is going on in foreign countries and returns and relates it to him.Generally, even normal dreams are regarded as journeys of the soul, and visions of thedreamer are interpreted as adventures during these journeys. So the dreams of themedicine-man can be regarded as particularly impressive and colourful psychic experiences.Sometimes such dreams are dreamt collectively.

Several men led by a medicine-man fall in trance and have the same dream together at thesame time. During such a dream he destroys the soul of one of the men and enriches hisown psychic power by the sacrifice. We do not know the real nature of these ‘flying’dreams and the ‘sacrifice’. We may regard it as a sort of transfer of psychic energy from oneindividual to another, the loss of energy causing the death of the giver.

The fact that such experiences are so far unknown to us does not necessarily mean thatsuch an experience cannot exist elsewhere. In August 1938 I was told of such a ‘sacrifice’by older Unambal men as follows (as usual the narrators made no difference between events


during dreams or states of trance and those of outward reality : they told their taleswithout modification, and it was left to me to distinguish between the different statesof consciousness) :

“The men sit down with the medicine-man and sing. The medicine-man takes a great snakeout of the water and the men sit themselves astride on it. The snake flies with them throughthe air. After some time they arrive in a foreign land. They sit down around the snake. Themedicine-man takes a stone knife and kills one of the men. He cuts him into pieces andgives those pieces to the snake. The other men sit around quietly and look on as the snakeswallows the pieces. Then they themselves also eat of the flesh of their fellow man. Themedicine-man cleans the bones of the killed one and lays them on the earth.

He lays them in the opposite way from what they should be laid in natural order. He laysthe thigh bones at the shoulder and vice versa. Then the other men return riding on theflying snake; but the medicine-man remains with the skeleton. He sings magical songsand the bones are re-covered with flesh. The killed one comes to life. The medicine-manproduces a second snake out of his navel and the two men ride home on this one. Afterthat all the men wake abruptly and do not know at the moment what has happened tothem. Only later they remember faintly all the events during their sleep. The sacrificed manthen dreams of a snake and dies in a few days.”

At present, these powers and phenomena are ceasing to be manifested. Always whenmentioning the medicine-men and their psychic power the aborigines emphasise the factthat really great medicine-men do not exist any longer. The medicine-men themselvesagree modestly with this opinion and point out that without great medicine-men theaborigines are going to vanish.

With approaching civilisation the psychic balance of these men is so much upset that theyare unable to have the same psychic experiences as their ancestors. To day, as theybecome unable to 'dream', they are inclined to regard the stories as reports of events in thereal world. They expect their medicine-man to perform ‘diving, flying and sacrificing’ in avisible and material way. Civilisation leads them towards a misinterpretation of theiroriginal abilities.

In north-west Australia, for example, the white doctor nearly always appears in an aeroplaneat the settlements in case of an emergency. These planes were seen also by those aborigineswho in their lifetime never met a white man. They know from accounts of others that thewhite men are able to fly. Now they expect their own medicine-men to do the same.Moreover, the latter, believing that the medicine-men of old times could fly in reality, feelthemselves inferior.

When the story of the sacrifice was related to me, it was at once compared with an account


of a medical operation in a hospital at Broome where some aborigines from the Kunmunyamission apparently had been present. The white medicine-man, I was told, could make aman fall asleep deeply, open his body without him feeling any pains. He could close thewound again and wake him up. Afterwards the victim would be without any knowledgeof what had happened to him during his sleep.

A New Cult. Besides the falling birth-rate, the destruction of the psychic atmosphere, andthe biological and social changes caused by contact with modern culture, there is a culturalphenomenon of more positive aspect brought about by contact. A new cult is migratingfrom one tribe to the other, combining old features with new ones. It seems to be a synthesisof the old and the new way of life, a synthesis in genuine aboriginal style.

Possibly, dances and perhaps also cults migrating from tribe to tribe belong, as a structuralelement, to the original culture of Australia. This migration seems to have connected tribeswith each other and to have conveyed new elements. This was obvious at least in the caseof the cult we observed in three tribes of northern Kimberley, where it showed considerablestrength and influence.

Coming to a tribe, this cult is attended by all the individuals with utmost concentration. Thetraditional mythical ideas are not impaired. On the contrary, the new cult absorbs andrevitalises them. It is like a psychic wave, for at indeterminate intervals a new one mayappear and flow from tribe to tribe. This idea occurred to me when I learned that the cultin question has been preceded by another one now out of date. Something of the natureof the processes of assimilation and acculturation became understandable by observing thiscult. Its advent was known long before it actually arrived; people were psychologicallyprepared for it, and its arrival brought about a new situation heralding possible developments.


Modern culture is received by these primitives not as somethingreal but as a mythical ghost or a figure. This figure is a personificationof all the features of modern culture known to the aborigines. Atthe same time it retains features of the old mythical ghosts. Thusmodern culture is assimilated to a certain extent to the old ideasin imagination. In this respect the new cult unites half-castes, full-bloodson stations, as well as the folk of the desolate hinterland, and so createsa new race consciousness.

The symbols of one of the spreading cults were wooden slabs ofroughly Tjurunga form painted red and yellow. The only thing wecould find out about them was that they were connected withemu meat. The cult in-question was no longer alive, and peopletalked freely about it and offered the tablets for a low price.Another cult called Kurrangara was coming slowly from the south. Tjurunga

The Ungarinjin were already initiated and most of the Worora were, while some of themand the greater part of the Unambal were still awaiting admission. Secrecy and awe penetratedeverything in connection with this new and powerful cult. Special initiation was necessaryalso for us and was offered only after months of daily contact. We were initiated into theKurrangara cult at a place called Wurewuri, which was not too far away from the modesthut of the old trapper south of the Prince Regent River. As the cult had to take place in thevicinity of white settlements, this place was the one nearest to the Unambal and all thedances and initiations were celebrated there. The members carefully explained to us thatthe slabs were endowed with an enormous power, a sort of poison with which the initiatedhad to be filled gradually by rubbing his body with smaller slabs lest he would die. When fullyinitiated a member radiated this power and had to clean himself carefully after each ceremony.


Without this precaution he would kill all persons who were excluded from membership.After being initiated properly, we had the opportunity to watch the initiation of someUnambal men from the hinterland who had travelled to this place for several days with theonly purpose of participating in the new power. The dances and the initiation ceremonyarranged for them was, though somewhat more detailed, basically the same as that whichwe had gone through.

The old trapper had never been initiated, and the cult as well as the slabs were kept away fromhim though not very strictly. The whole cult was hidden absolutely, however, from themissionary of the Kunmunja mission, Mr. Love, who had taught the aborigines not to mentionin his presence any sinful subject such as magic or sex. He thus had barred himself from anydeeper knowledge (though he was an expert as far as their material culture was concerned).

Aborigine dance and initiation. Photo Andreas Lommel 1938


At the Kurrangara dancing ground at Wurewuri were assembled Unambal men withUngarinyin from Sale River Station and Worora from Kunmunya mission; the latter spoketo us about the cult only after the repeated warning not to tell anything to the missionary.With regard to their reactions to the cult, which was quite new to them, the Unambal wereespecially interesting; they were deeply impressed and absorbed. The Ungarinyin, whohad known of the cult for some time, handed it on to their neighbours, acting as pre-emi-nent men with a certain benevolent superiority.

Dr. H. Petri, the leader of our expedition, studied the Kurrangara cult in the Ungarinyin territory,whereas I found an opportunity to do so chiefly with Unambal informants. Comparing ournotes later, we found that we had covered two different aspects of the cult, namely the fulldevelopment of it among the Ungarinjin and its initial phase among the Unambal, whereits relation to the preceding cult seemed to be comparatively clearly visible. TheKurrangara myth as told by Unambal was linked with the myth of the preceding cult,which, however, was already out of date for at least one generation, as only older peoplecould give any information about it. The slabs which were the symbol of the older cultwere said to have come from the home of a ghost in the north named Nguniai. Nguniai wasregarded as inventor of many tools and laws, and even the invention of circumcision wasascribed to him. He has human appearance; only at his elbows, long and sharp knives stand out.

Examining slabs. Photo Andreas Lommel 1938


With these bone knives he cuts the slabs out of trees and ornaments them. Nguniai lives ina big house erected on four poles. Another ghost called Vaybalma steals the slabs from timeto time and runs away with them. The persecuting Nguniai has considerable difficulties infinding the thief’s track on the sand; he can only see it on hard stone. This is because in theworld of the ghosts everything is contrary to things in the human world. Thus the thiefavoids stony ground and after a successful flight gives the slabs to the men.

The more modern cult is connected with the older one by its myth. Tjanba, the ghostproducing slabs for this cult, is a son of Nguniai. He migrated from north to south and isbelieved to live in the southern desert today, from where the Kurrangara slabs are coming.The Kurrangara slabs follow exactly the way of the slabs of the older cult mentioned aboveonly in the opposite direction. Thus they will naturally one day reach the region inhabited byNguniai. The moment Nguniai sees the first of his son’s slabs he will stop producing themhimself and then, the myth concludes, life on earth will come to an end.

In the myth of Tjanba, some of the characteristics of this ghost are borrowed from modernculture : his house is of corrugated iron and below it grow poisonous weeds. Tjanba is ableto impart the hitherto unknown diseases of leprosy and syphilis by means of little stickswhich have lain in those weeds overnight. Men who possess Kurrangara slabs are able toinfect other people. Tjanba hunts with a rifle and ornaments his slabs with iron tools. Todistribute his slabs to men (some of his slabs are stolen, others he himself sends out) heuses aeroplanes, motor cars and steamers. When showing the slabs to his fellow ghosts, heasks them for tea, sugar and bread.

Following the myth, the modern cult demands exuberant feasts with tea, sugar, bread andas much beef as possible but no meat of any indigenous animal. The cult places have to bein the vicinity of stations. The cult language is pidgin-English. The cult is directed by a‘boss,’ the slabs are stored away by a ‘clerk,’ the feasts are announced by a ‘mailman,’ andorder and discipline during them is maintained by some specially appointed ‘pickybas’ (frompolice-boys).

The Kurrangara cult, which absolutely excludes women, intensifies the cultural life of theaborigines and temporarily brings back something similar to the psychic atmosphere of theold time, though in a somewhat sinister version. The former medicine-man is replaced bythe ‘boss.’ The introduction into the cult replaces the former initiation and makes the deepestimpression on individuals, who at this moment believe themselves to be face to face witha power that at will distributes life and death.

The ‘boss’ has the power to kill and to heal, to infect other people with, or protect hisadherents against, leprosy and syphilis. His methods are essentially the same as those ofthe old medicine-men; only the symbols have changed. It is now no longer the snake-Ungud,but the Kurrangara slab which incorporates life and death. Those slabs sometimes bigger


than a man are painted red, black and white. The person under an evil spell sees, dreaming,how his Kurrangara slab disintegrates or becomes shabby, whereas the dream announcingrecovery shows the slab fresh and newly painted. The water symbol maintains its salutarymeaning: the slab in danger is cooled or cleaned in the water.

The cult is remarkable as an expression of some assimilation of elements of modern cultureas the aborigines conceive them. At the same time, it is the expression of a change in theircultural state. This becomes especially clear when we consider the fact that time has alsochanged its aspect in the new myth of the Kurrangara cult. Hitherto there was no conceptof a future. There was only an ‘eternal dream time’ uniting the beginning of the world andthe present. The past was more important than the present, the latter being only a reflectionof the former. Now the past is fading away and the present derives its importance from afuture with a menacing end of the world.

The new conception of time clearly shows the new psychic condition of the aborigines: thepreponderance of the subconscious (expressed in the importance of the past and the ‘eternaldream time’) gives way to a stronger degree of consciousness which has arisen throughtheir altered relation to time and environment. They now are far more conscious of theiractual living conditions, as well as of themselves. One can note the faint beginning of afeeling of racial homogeneity.

This feeling could, under different circumstances, be the beginning of a new cultural activitybut, in the circumstances, it does not hold any promise for the future. The future is felt tobe extremely dark, and a deep melancholy and apathy are salient characteristics of the presentattitude. This attitude finds its artistic expression in the Kurrungara myth and dances anexpression darkened still more by additional mythological features linked with the cult.

The Unambal informants, who were deeply impressed by the approaching end of theworld, told me that this is going to be announced by the arrival of different Kurrangaraslabs sent out by Tjanba’s wife. As soon as these slabs are distributed the social order willbe completely reversed: women will take the place of men; they will arrange the feasts andhand on the slabs, whereas the men will gather edible roots, without being allowed toparticipate in the feasts. My informants used to speak of these inevitable events with seriousapprehension and to link them with another cult, which they expected soon to arrive fromthe north, but of which some already claimed to know the essentials.

This newest cult was called Maui, and despite the fact that it was to come from the north itwas regarded as something very similar to the cult of Tjanba’s wife. Maui also was associatedwith venereal diseases, and I was told that its poison made these diseases spread.Kurrangara and the approaching Maui were both regarded as dangerous and they bothmade the aborigines concentrate on the imminent future, which was believed to be the endof everything alive.

An eschatological myth may have been part of the aborigines’ traditions, but now theapproach of modern culture with so many fateful elements accompanying it certainlymakes the aborigines concentrate on the end of the world.

ANDREAS LOMMEL.


rock painting sites in the kimberley region

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