The story

Told as it is shared

In the country of the west Kimberley, the Wandjina made the land, the people and the law. They came out of the sea and the sky in the Dreaming — great beings of cloud and rain who shaped the hills and rivers, gave each country its language, and taught the people how to live inside it.

When the making was finished, the Wandjina did not die and did not leave. They walked into the caves and painted themselves on the walls — and that is where they remain. Their painted bodies are vast, their eyes ringed like wheels, their mouths never painted at all: a Wandjina's power needs no words.

Each wet season, the Wandjina send the rain. The storms that build over the Kimberley coast are theirs; the lightning is their anger when the law is broken. And because the paintings are the beings themselves — not pictures of them — the custodians of each country refresh the paint as the old layers flake away. Repainting is not restoration. It is keeping the rain coming.

Country & context

The land that holds it

The Wandjina belong to three language groups — the Worrorra, the Ngarinyin and the Wunambal — whose countries run along the coast and islands of the west Kimberley. Together their nations are known as Wanjina-Wunggurr, and the law they share is one law with many verses.

The galleries run for hundreds of kilometres, some painted over tens of thousands of years — among the oldest continuing painting traditions on Earth. Older still, the slender Gwion Gwion figures share the same walls beneath them: two painted worlds in one cave.

Art & memory

Painted, woven, sung

A Wandjina is painted in a single, certain line: halo headdress, ring eyes, no mouth, the body filled with the lines of rain and lightning. There is no perspective and no background — the figure is the landscape.

The images are living, restricted law: some galleries are seen only in ceremony, and copying or touching them without permission breaks the law of that country. Public telling happens where custodians open it — on country, with the custodians' own guides.