Untitled - Goodie Barratt

Goody Barrett is a senior Gija woman who was born on Lissadell Station to the north of Turkey Creek in the East Kimberley in Western Australia about 1930. Her real Gija name is Lilwayi and her skin is Nyawurru. In the last thirty years the country on Lissadell Station has undergone massive destruction on two counts. It is party under the water of Lake Argyle formed by the damming of the Ord River and it is also the site of the Argyle Diamond Mine which has demolished a complete dreaming place. Most of Goody Barrett's pictures show Dreamings and places where she walked in the bush on Lissadell when she was a child. Because of the impact of the mine on the country, she often paints the Dreamings associated with the area. In this print we see three Dreamtime women who were fishing for burramundi by pushing a wall of spinifex down a creek. The barramundi got away and jumped right over the ranges north of the mine leaving its scales there to become the diamonds. The women went down and stood at the edge of the water at a place called Gawinyin or Cattle Creek Rockhole on the Bow River south of the mine. They turned to stone and you can still see them standing near the water hole there today.