WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

For the Wanjina-Wunggurr community, the rock paintings are a visual testimony of a
complex association of socio-religious beliefs that continue to be central to the laws
and customs of members of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, Unggumi, Umida, Unggarrangu,
Wunambal and Gaambera language groups. Collectively, the members of this
community believes that they are themselves descendents of a single creator being
called Wanjina, depicted as a painted image across the Wanjina-Wunggurr homeland
(Blundell et al. 2009). Some of the Wanjina figures are of monumental proportions
(up to six metres in length – Blundell & Woolagoodja 2005). They typically have
large faces dominated by black eyes and no mouth. The Wanjina's head is often
surrounded by a ring, or number of concentric rings, and a narrow dark plaque is
regularly represented in the middle of the chest. Painted in natural earth pigments on a
white background that is typically a wash made of the mineral huntite, Wanjina
figures usually face forward; sometimes the whole figure is shown with a decorated
body, but often only the head and shoulders, or just the face is represented (Flood
1990; Mowarjarlai and Malnic 1993; Blundell and Woolagoodja 2005; Blundell et al.
2009). Wanjina are usually accompanied by animals and plants and other supernatural
beings of the Lalai (the Dreaming) including the Wunggurr Snake (Blundell and
Woolagoodja 2005; Blundell et al. 2009). Some paintings have clearly been executed
by using a fine brush; others are cruder with the paint having been applied with
coarser materials such as sticks or fingers (Donaldson 2007). The Wanjina rock art
tradition is probably the Kimberley's best known, developed over the last 5,000 years,
and continues to have strong and direct religious and cosmological association for
Traditional Owners today.
Gwion Gwion painted images (also spelled Guyon, Djorn and Gjorn) paintings are
also found in rock shelters across the Wanjina-Wunggurr homeland, as well as on
Balanggarra country. According to Lommel (1996 [1952]); Worms (1965); Ngarjno et
al. (2000); Blundell and Wooladgoodja (2005); and Blundell et al. (2009) the Gwion
Gwion are a significant component of the religious and cosmological belief system of
the Wanjina-Wunggurr people. These paintings are also an important way in which
Balanggarra people understand their history (Blundell et al. 2009). Gwion Gwion or
Girrigirro (the Balanggarra name for these painted images) are found across both
groups of Aboriginal people. Examples of this type of painted motif have also been
located in the Victoria River Downs region of the Northern Territory (Taçon et al.
1999; Morwood 2002). Some rock art specialists suggest that the Gwion
Gwion/Girrigirro motifs are the western-most variant of a style of painted rock art
called Mimi or Dynamic figures that exists in Arnhem Land and Queensland (Ryan
and Akerman 1993; Lewis 1997).
The highly diverse and finely detailed Gwion Gwion/Girrigirro painted motifs are
usually diminutive (25–30 centimetres in height) monochromatic figures often
depicted in large groups that appear to 'float, glide, hover or fly as if they are
somehow suspended in air' (Taçon 1999). They generally 'consist of dark-purple to
red ochre pigment applied as fine lines, which have been incorporated into the
sandstone surface' (Ryan and Akerman 1993, 14). A feature of the Gwion
Gwion/Girrigirro figures is the wealth of material culture items depicted. Figures
adorned in elaborate headdresses, skirts, tassels, bracelets and belts carry bags,
double-barbed spears, spear throwers, boomerangs and clubs (Lewis 1988, 1997;
Welch 1993; Walsh and Morwood 1999).
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