Kimberley- Aboriginal Australian LocationLocation"Wanjina Country"

Shaped in the Lalai

The Kimberley is Wanjina country, the sacred landscape of the Worora, Ngarinyin, and Wunambul peoples. In the Lalai, the creation period, the Wanjina spirits traveled across this country and left the land in its present form. They dug out the rivers and raised the mountains. The gorges, waterholes, and sandstone escarpments that define the Kimberley each mark a place where an ancestral being acted or rested.

The Wanjina originally inhabited the sea before moving onto the land. When their creative work was complete and the stones were still soft, they built themselves houses of stone, the rock shelters that open across the Kimberley escarpments. When the Wanjina died, they lay down on the soft rock and left the imprint of their bodies on the surface. These imprints are the paintings: large, round-faced figures with halo-like headdresses, imposing eyes, and no mouths. The traditional custodians say the paintings were not made by human hands but inherited from the spirits who left their own images during the Lalai.

Everything Standing Up Alive

The painted images are not relics of a completed past. The Worora, Ngarinyin, and Wunambul periodically retouch and repaint the Wanjina figures to maintain the spirits' power over rain and the seasonal cycle. When the paintings fade, the Wanjina's power weakens; when they are refreshed, the land is renewed. This repainting is a ceremonial responsibility passed through generations, and its disruption during the mission era led to the degradation of many images. Cultural leaders like Sam Woolagoodja and his son Donny Woolagoodja have worked to reverse this loss.

David Mowaljarlai, a senior Ngarinyin elder, described this relationship through the concept of Yorro Yorro, a Ngarinyin expression meaning "everything standing up alive." The land, the art, and the Wanjina spirits are not separate things. They stand together, still alive.