The renewal of Naworo

Deep in the Top End’s stone country, Indigenous custodians are restoring a revered spirit ancestor. Repainting rock art can be a controversial practice, but as David Hancock learns, this rock-art project is not just a conservation exercise or an archaeological endeavour; it is an effort to overcome the risk of empty country.

Even people with long experience of rock-art sites would struggle to remain emotionless at Kudjekbinj (goo-jik-bin), a rock shelter about 320 kilometres east of Darwin, in the heart of Arnhem Land.

It’s a majestic place in the shadow of an imposing escarpment. A massive slab of sandstone, some 25 metres long, lies separated cleanly from the rock above, its shiny surface rubbed smooth by generations of Bininj people – traditional custodians of this country. The presence of the ancestral figure of Naworo (nar-war-o) is palpable. This is his place, the surrounding land shaped by his journeys. According to Bininj senior custodian Terry Maralngurra, Naworo’s body lies beneath the block of sandstone.

And there, above, only an arm’s length away, is his imposing spirit. Few places in northern Australia hold such a close association between the physical and spiritual.

Conrad Maralngurra, his older brother Terry and other Traditional Owners of the Ngalngbali (nglun-bali) clan estate in Western Arnhem Land feared the revered painting of Naworo at Kudjekbinj was on the verge of disappearing. The white clay, or delek, that characterised the 9.5-metre painting had faded due to time and weathering.

After consulting with the clan, Conrad and Terry Maralngurra decided to revive Naworo, one of several nayuhyungki (na-yu-yungi) – ancestors – a giant, who arrived from the north to travel Arnhem Land thousands of years ago. They would repaint the image of the one-armed being with six fingers and six toes on the ceiling at Kudjekbinj.

“When we were children, Naworo was alright,” Terry says. “We didn’t ever repaint because he used to renew himself. But today in 2023 we have to go and renew him and that is what we are doing now because there is no one there in that country.

“That’s what happens when you leave your country. The country is all alone and the story will fade away. Today he is lonely and slowly fading away. In the future when he knows people are back he will start to renew himself again.”

Rock art is an integral part of maintaining culture in Western and Central Arnhem Land for Bininj people. Their traditional lands include the rugged 22,000-square-kilometre plateau known by speakers of Bininj Kunwok (dialects of the region) as Kuwarddewardde (gwart-ay-wart-ay) and by others as the “stone country”. Kuwarddewardde borders Kakadu and Nitmiluk national parks in the west and south-west, and takes in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) and parts of the Djelk IPA and Mimal land management area.

The plateau’s Kombolgie sandstone, which formed about a billion years ago, has been carved by wet and dry seasons over eons, creating a network of fissures, chasms and gorges. The plateau’s geological stability over this time has afforded plant and animal species protection from fire and flood and allowed them to evolve in relative isolation; some are found nowhere else on Earth.

Bininj, too, found sanctuary in the stone country for thousands of years but many were enticed away, forced out or died from introduced diseases when the region was explored and settled by balanda (Europeans) in the mid to late 1800s.

In the 1970s, some elders returned to Western Arnhem Land to establish small outstations, determined to revive traditional cultural and land management practices. The movement gathered momentum at the turn of the 21st century and was eventually recognised by the Australian government through the declaration of a number of Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs). Some of these generated income for Bininj through managed burning and the sale of carbon credits.

The long absence of a large population of Bininj meant vegetation built up and the region was at the mercy of wildfires that not only devastated wildlife but threatened rock-art sites and their priceless contents.

There are more than 125,000 known rock-art sites in Australia. Some contain grand galleries while others hold a single, faded image on an out-of-the-way cave wall. Artistic styles include paintings, rock engravings (petroglyphs) and beeswax motifs. It’s hard to date rock art but scientists believe some examples to be over 30,000 years old.

Rock-art hotspots around the country include Arnhem Land in the NT, and the Kimberley and the Pilbara in WA. The stone country is particularly rich; it’s estimated there are three or four art sites for every 10 sq. km of rocky terrain – potentially more than 40,000 sites in total. Most art is in or near areas where Bininj have lived for thousands of years and while some sites are specific to men or women, most are communal. Bininj know rock art paintings as bim, an abbreviation of kunwarddebim (gwart-ay-bim), a word in the Kunwinjku dialect. The art usually serves a purpose – to educate children about the natural and spiritual world, describe food sources, provide a warning, delineate clan boundaries, tell stories about important events or to simply celebrate life.

Of particular interest in the stone country is art from the period when Bininj came into contact with people from other cultures – Macassans (seafarers from modern-day Indonesia) and Europeans. It is one of the best records of first contact between cultures in the country.

Some galleries hold paintings of white, ghostly figures (Europeans) smoking pipes or carrying rifles atop creatures that resemble massive macropods (horses). These 150-year-old illustrations sit alongside – and in some cases are painted over – bold, naturalistic figures that date back thousands of years.

In the past, rock-art research has primarily been the domain of anthropologists and archaeologists employed by tertiary institutions. Their findings are built on the raw materials of traditional knowledge (interviews and documentation of conversations with traditional owners) and photographic images and artefacts taken from sites.

These materials often remain with institutions where they were archived, studied further by academics or used by governments to justify the protection or exploitation of an area. Rarely do the data or materials return to a community in any form other than a research paper or government document.

Rock-art research grants are largely directed through the Australian Research Council, which allocates funds to researchers at Australian universities. Grants to study any aspect of rock art are rarely given to Indigenous organisations; however, Bininj have now taken charge of research on their own country.

In 2010, Aboriginal elders from the Warddeken and Djelk IPAs established the Karrkad-Kandji Trust to seek alternative sources of funding for land management and cultural projects. KKT approaches Australian and international philanthropic organisations and individuals to raise millions of dollars. This has enabled elders, through their land management organisations, to employ specialists who work with and train Bininj rangers to locate, record, preserve, maintain and study sites and artwork.

Dr Claudia Cialone, the current rock art project manager, has worked for Warddeken Land Management for five years; three years ago she was joined by project officer Chester Clarke. Cialone is a fluent Kunwinjku speaker who studied at the Australian National University to gain a multidisciplinary PhD in linguistics and spatial navigation; her thesis was based on field work in the Warddeken IPA in 2015–17. Clarke studied archaeology at Flinders University in SA.

They are two of several scientists employed by WLM to help manage different aspects of the IPA. Cialone and Clarke live and work between three outstations – Kabulwarnmyo, Manmoyi and Mamadawerre – looking for and recording bim in remote areas with Indigenous rangers.

“We employed these people because we want them to help us preserve the stories through balanda ways,” says Conrad Maralngurra. “We also want to share the stories but we want to take control and have legal ownership of the knowledge. We want to maintain, preserve and protect it for the benefit of our own country and people.”

“That’s what happens when you leave your country. The country is all alone and the story will fade away.”

Cialone’s work with Bininj includes providing logistical support to take people out bush, usually in 4WDs or helicopters; to teach technological skills to record art using cameras, tablets and GPS devices; and to help with cultural and linguistic recordings to gather the stories of the motifs.

“We work together on ways to create a database to keep all that information safe for future generations and establish an element of accessibility for elders who cannot get to those sites,” she says.

“There are opportunities for Bininj in land management roles in connection to cultural heritage, through extending academic qualifications and fulltime work. Culture and ecology is one and the same for Bininj because it is a culture that is embedded in ecology.”

The painting of Naworo at Kudjekbinj is a short helicopter flight from Mamadawerre, an outstation with a seasonal population of 30–50 people. The Goomadeer River flows nearby and the settlement is a base for Warddeken rangers.

“The Naworo site is fantastic,” Cialone tells me. “The rock in the lower position would have held a lot of people sitting on it and I have never seen a painting so long. At 9.5 metres it may be the longest rock-art painting in the whole of Arnhem Land.

“It is certainly a beautiful place and is clearly not an opportunistic site. People – maybe a family or small community – lived there for a long period. Bininj would call it kuwaddakuken (gwarta-gugen), a real – as in culturally significant – home.

“This site is also special because there are [human] bones in a cave at the front of the site and there are bones at the back, so it is the combination of one of the longest paintings in Arnhem Land, plus a double burial site.”

Repainting rock art can be controversial among Bininj, and Traditional Owners have differing views, often depending on the subject matter.

“Repainting rock art can be a tricky concept,” Cialone says. “We have discussed this at Warddeken Board level; in European terms such process can go under the heading of restoration, which is part maintenance and conservation to return a work of art to its original condition.

“Some Traditional Owners seem to be of the idea that if the painting is disappearing, it means the spirits of the land would have wanted it, and we have to let it disappear. Some others think that if we are not going to the site anymore and we don’t live there anymore and if we don’t do anything for it this will disappear, taking with it not only the visual but all the stories associated with it and so we will not have anything to pass on to the next generations other than photos of the past. We all know that the best intergenerational exchange of knowledge happens on country rather than [looking at] photographs in an office.”

In the case of Naworo, the decision to renew was made by senior custodians Terry and Conrad Maralngurra. They also wanted many members of the Ngalngbali clan to be involved in the project: Terry was accompanied by his wife Josephine, son Robbie and his wife, Selisa Burunali, and their two children Velina and Festo. Rangers cleared vegetation from around the site to ensure fire would not damage the painting and secured panels to keep feral animals such as pigs and buffalo at bay.

Members of the clan carefully and slowly brought Naworo back to life over three days in early May, frequently lying back on their elbows to examine their work. Five-year-old Velina Maralngurra scrambled around the rocks and her one-year-old brother slept peacefully on the cool sandstone. During the process Conrad and Terry sang songs associated with Naworo and his travels, and at the end they cleansed the shelter with smoke.

“We had three generations present,” Cialone says. “This is important because the rock-art ­project is not just a conservation exercise or an archaeological endeavour; it is an effort that Warddeken and Bininj are putting in to overcome the risk of empty country.

“Empty country is the biggest threat to culture. This was a way to take three generations out there to tell stories, so it’s not just the science of restoration of the site. There is also the importance of taking people back on empty country and keeping that lore alive.”

At the end of the project, Terry and Josephine’s grandchildren and other young Bininj gather on the sandstone slab and gaze up in awe. There, in the spirit ancestor’s renewed presence, Terry tells them Naworo’s story.

“Before I was ever born, this fella here built this place,” he says. “Naworo was a creative man, he made heaven and earth. He came all the way from Goulburn Island [in the Arafura Sea] with his two wives. They travelled all over Arnhem Land together but he got angry with those two and left them in a cave on a high mountain near Gunbalanya.

“He travelled inland towards here passing Goomadeer [River] right up to Mamadawerre. Near Kudjekbinj he chopped off his right arm to use like a fighting stick; it was very long and heavy, and as he dragged it along it made a creek all the way to the old camp near Mamadawerre.

“He went upstream alone with his arm and made a creek up to the place where we are now. Suddenly he sees all the rocks, he looked around and decided to put himself here. All he had to do was blow on that rock to cover himself, the one we are sitting on. So we are sitting down here and he is underneath. His spirit – that white drawing you see above – is his spirit.

“Every single day if you go and check, his head is different – sometimes bird, or frog, or buffalo – but different every day like the animals around here. In the old days when people were living in this country they would visit Naworo a lot. He would reveal himself to them by dreams and talk to them through songlines, celebrations and help them find bush tucker, so the stories would go on and on and on.

“That’s the end of the story. Not really long one. But important.”