The bush plum also plays an important part in Warlpiri Dreaming and ritual practices involved in Yilpinji, Love Magic. When a girl falls in love she goes to her female relatives and is instructed in how to attract her man as a lover. She weaves a belt out of hair while singing Yilpinji songs imbuing the belt with magic. When the man approaches she entices him with her charms until he comes under the influence of her allure. She reveals the belt as his ardour grows and persuades him to place the belt around her waist. As he does, he falls under her spell and they go off together as a couple. Together they eat bush plums and hunt for food. Other important Warlpiri, on learning of their tryst, follow them and confront them as a couple and also eat the bush plums. In this way the group recognizes their relationship and acknowledges that it is an appropriate match. They are now recognized by all as a couple. (From love… art & ceremony Yilpinji Christine Nicholls)
Lily Hargraves Nungarrayi (1930 - 2019) was one of the old desert walkers, born in the Tanami Desert in her country near Jilla Well (Chilla Well). When, in 1950, the Warlpiri population at Yuendemu had outgrown the settlement’s housing capabilities, Nungarrayi moved to the settlement of Lajamanu along with 1000 others. A tiny, very isolated point in the north of the Warlpiri estate, ten hour’s drive south of Darwin and eight hours north-west of Alice Springs. Here, Nungarrayi resided until her death in 2019.
Lily Yirdingali Jurrah Hargraves Nungarrayi belongs among the ranks of Australia’s greatest Indigenous artists. Nungarrayi was ferocious, painting against the deliberate erasure of her culture, she was among the last in possession of some key aspects of Warlpiri sacred knowledge.
Every painting in Nungurray’s legacy seems to contain an earnest thought that a return to some dignified form of traditional life may be possible. Her painting practice was an effort toward recording a Warlpiri history that was at risk of erasure, for a Warlpiri people that, before colonisation, had had no need for a method to document its past.
