Langkur (Lingurr) - Rover Joolama Thomas

In Langkur (Lingurr) 1987 Thomas depicts one of two ancestral snakes that feature in the painted boards used in the Kurirr Kurirr ceremony. The ritual interprets the destruction of the city of Darwin in 1974 by Cyclone Tracy, which then moved across to the eastern Kimberley. Here the roads flooded by the teeming rains of the cyclone caused a car accident in which Thomas' classificatory mother was fatally injured. The spirit of this woman revealed to Thomas the Kurirr Kurirr ritual and its associated song cycles and graphic images that were painted onto boards carried by ceremonial participants. Langkur (Lingurr) 1987 refers to the Rainbow Serpent Unggud (also known as Wungkul or Wungurr) who, in the guise of the cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin. In this work the artist has also depicted the place where the car accident occurred. It is a junction in the road just outside of Turkey Creek: the actual site appears in the painting at the junction between the snake's head and the first 'hill-top' at the extreme left.