The Artists of Arnhem Land Adventure

BBC Four Collections,

specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this collection, Sir David Attenborough

has chosen documentaries from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme

and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.

CHANTING, DIDGERIDOO PLAYS

This is a sacred place,

a cave sacred to the Aborigines of this part of northern Australia.

Here they come to perform their rituals.

The clefts here are filled with the bones of their dead,

and these rocks they have decorated

until they glow with the colours of a hundred upon hundred of paintings.

Some of these paintings are undoubtedly very old.

The local people don't even know who made these.

They explain them by saying

that they're the self-portraits of a spirit people, the Mimi.

The Mimi have extremely thin bodies.

There the legs, the torso and the arms.

So thin, in fact, that they can't go out in a high wind,

as they might blow away or their frail bodies be broken.

But they live and they hunt and they eat just like ordinary Aborigines.

And this one has got a fan made from a goose's wing in this hand,

and in the other hand, a woomera,

a spear-thrower, in which he's holding a great, long,

two-pronged spear.

These are benevolent spirits,

but these, painted not in white but in red, are extremely evil.

These are women. There are her legs, her torso, her arms and her head.

And these steal the souls of the sick and roast them and eat them.

And in her hands, she is holding a loop of string

which is a magical device

to enable her to travel silently throughout the night.

The Mimis live in clefts of rock all around here, but you never see them.

And the reason?

Because the Mimis, whenever they see someone coming,

can blow on the surface of the rock, the rock parts,

the Mimi slips inside and disappears.

Remarkable though this type of painting is,

there's another type of painting here

which is perhaps even more extraordinary,

and this has been made comparatively recently.

Here is an example of it - a turtle.

And this turtle is painted in a style which is quite different.

The artist is showing not just what he sees but what he knows is there.

For inside the animals that are painted in this style,

you can see their heart and their stomach and their gut,

their skeleton and their muscles.

There are also barramundi, the best-tasting of all the local fish.

And the kangaroos with their skeletons

and internal organs clearly shown.

And among the animals, stencilled handprints

and strange, enigmatic designs of humanlike figures.

Precisely because these paintings are so recent,

they have a particular fascination.

For in many ways, they are similar to the first paintings

mankind ever made, during the Stone Age,

20,000 years ago in the caves of Europe.

Both prehistoric and Aboriginal paintings show similar subjects.

Both are often superimposed haphazardly, one on top of the other.

Most important of all, both were painted by people

living at much the same stage of technological development.

For the Aborigines are still wandering hunters

with no settled villages,

no knowledge of agriculture, and no herds or flocks.

No-one can ever be certain

why prehistoric man produced his astonishing art,

but we can discover how and why these designs were made.

For the Aborigines still paint.

From them, therefore,

we may be able to get some insight into the very origins of art.

The most accomplished painter we met was named Magani.

He lives in one of the remotest parts of Australia - Arnhem Land,

a vast, empty wilderness on the northern tropical coast.

His tribal territory is flat bush country with few rocks or caves,

so Magani has to find something other than stone on which to paint.

And he uses the bark

of a kind of eucalyptus tree called the stringybark.

He was very particular in selecting his tree.

Most he rejected at a glance as being unsuitable.

Either they were not big enough or had been damaged by a bushfire

or were infested with wood-boring insects.

Even those which seemed at first sight to be suitable

might prove to be faulty, with bark that cracked or was too thin.

And he might have to half-strip four or five trees

before he at last found one

which would provide him with the wide, smooth, flexible sheet of bark

free of knotholes, which he wanted for his painting.

For further treatment, the bark had to be taken back to his home,

a small shelter of branches in a clearing.

He lives quite close to a newly founded government station,

but this, in fact, has hardly changed his traditional way of life.

And it's in a place like this that he prefers to sleep and live and paint.

The bark must first be stripped of its rough, outside, fibrous layers.

As it dries in the hot sun,

the bark curls into a tube on which it's quite impossible to paint.

To make it straight, it must be heated over a fire,

and the strips of the outer bark provide a convenient fuel.

It will lie on the ground, weighted with stones,

for two or three days, so that it hardens into a flat sheet.

This, then, is Magani's canvas. His colours are also found close by.

They are mineral ochres,

and the deposits in which they occur are well known.

Indeed, sometimes these sites are recognised as the places where,

during the Creation, the blood of one of the ancestral spirits

was spilt and soaked into the ground.

Among the rocks, he finds little pebbles of iron oxide,

and he tests the quality of their colour by scratching them on a stone.

These provide him with both red and yellow pigments.

One of Magani's helpers and close friends, Jara Billy,

is also out in the bush.

He is gathering orchids, for these too are necessary for the painting.

The juice of their tubers makes an excellent fixative

which prevents the paint from flaking easily.

The method of using the orchid is quite simple.

You bite it...dip it into water...

and then smear a rough outline of the design you're about to paint.

Magani has four colours at his disposal -

red and yellow iron oxides,

a black made from charcoal, and white from china clay,

which he collects from pits dug in the mangrove swamps

down by the seashore.

His brushes are also extremely simple.

This one is simply a twig with a burred end,

and he uses it for making thick lines and for stippling.

He also has another stick, the end of which he has chewed

until it's widely splayed.

And this he uses for putting on broad strokes of colour.

A third, and the one that requires most skill in using,

is a twig with a few trailing fibres tied to the end.

And this he employs for the delicate task of cross-hatching.

Everyone in the neighbourhood freely admitted

that Magani was the best artist in their tribe,

but that doesn't mean that he was the only one.

Indeed, we met no man who, when asked,

did not agree immediately that he was a painter.

Painting, for these people, is not something you look at

but something that everybody does as a matter of course.

Often, men would come and sit by Magani in a sociable way,

take up - unasked - one of his brushes,

and start work on some corner of the bark that was blank.

But there were few who had the skill,

the aptitude or the passion to paint as intensively as Magani did.

He worked fast and with great neatness and assurance.

It seemed as though he had clearly in his mind the completed design.

And although he occasionally made mistakes in outline,

and rubbed part of it out with a wettened finger,

he never changed his mind about the position of a figure.

I asked Magani why he painted.

His first explanation was a very simple one.

Because he could sell his paintings at the government station.

But this couldn't be a complete answer,

for he and his people were painting similar designs on bark

long before there were any Europeans here to buy them.

Why?

Because, he said, he liked doing so.

And for some time, this was the only explanation I could find.

But later, I was to get a deeper insight into his motives.

I was to discover, in a dramatic and unexpected way,

that Magani didn't always paint

merely as a way of passing the time or amusing himself,

but that his art played an integral and vital part in tribal ritual.

At the end of a week, the whole bark was covered with designs.

Some of them were easily recognisable,

but there were others that were more mysterious.

Micky, tell me about these pictures.

Er...what's that?

- MICKY: Dog. - A dog.

- DAVID: And here? - Heart.

DAVID: Heart. Heart.

And this?

- MICKY: Gut, you know. - Gut, gut.

I see. Tell me about this place here.

- MICKY: Two women and one boy... - Two women... Yeah.

MICKY: ..and making fire.

- DAVID: Making a fire? - Making fire.

- Lay down like that now. - And they lay down?

Yeah.

DAVID: And what are these?

Black-head lizard.

DAVID: Oh, a lizard with a... with a big beard round its...

- Big fur, big earholes. - We call him frill lizard.

- That's it. - Is that him?

Yes.

- DAVID: What's that there? - Little goanna.

DAVID: Little goanna. Here... What's that?

HE TUTS

- He makes a noise like that? - Yeah.

- In night-time? - Night...

- Hm? - Before the light, him talk.

Ah, yes. Before the light, he talks.

- Yes. And what's this fellow? - A goanna, little goanna.

DAVID: A little goanna.

And along here, you tell me the story along here.

- MICKY: This one... - Yes.

He go...look round for a wallaby.

DAVID: He looks around for a wallaby, yeah.

- MICKY: Gets his woomera... - Gets his spear-thrower.

MICKY: Throws spear.

Gets his spear-thrower and throws a spear.

- MICKY: See him, this wallaby. - And he kills the wallaby.

MICKY: He kills it.

- DAVID: And what's this? - Ah...bush tucker.

- DAVID: Bush tucker. - Bush tucker.

- DAVID: The yam. - That's right.

DAVID: And this fellow?

- MICKY: Emu. - Emu. The big bird.

MICKY: That's bird, yeah.

Ah, yeah. And down here? What happened here?

WHISPERS: Yurlungur.

WHISPERS: Why you talk so soft?

WHISPERS: Yurlungur, if we talk hard, might hear me.

If we talk hard, who might hear?

Young boy and little boy and woman.

Young boy and little boy and woman, and they mustn't hear?

That's right.

DAVID: What is this fellow, Yurlungur, that's so secret?

- MICKY: Business in Madayin. - Business in Madayin.

- DAVID: With corroboree. - That's right.

DAVID: Is this a spirit?

- MICKY: God made... - God made this?

Yeah.

Yurlungur where? Over this way?

- In the bush, yeah. - In the bush?

That's right.

Maybe you're thinking all right for me to see him?

Me no woman - all right for me to go?

- All right. - You show me?

Uh...

- If you like, you can go. - You'll take me?

And you look on Yurlungur.

- You show me Yurlungur? - Yes.

Good, Micky. Thank you very much. We go.

'I had little idea as to what this Yurlungur could be.

'Obviously it was a spirit, but equally clearly,

'it was also some material but highly sacred object

'concealed away in the bush,

'which only privileged people were allowed to see.

'As I followed Magani, I didn't know what to expect.

'And then, half a mile away, we came to a small shelter of branches.

'Beside it sat Jara Billy, Magani's helper,

'the man who had collected the orchids.

'And Jara Billy was busy painting a ten-foot pole.'

This...Yurlungur.

- Yes. - Ah.

'It was magnificently decorated.

'But it was only after I had looked at it for some minutes

'that I suddenly realised that it was hollow.

'One end of it had been plastered with beeswax

'and fashioned into a mouthpiece.

'Yurlungur was a trumpet.

'And to confirm this, Magani showed me how it was played.'

LOW DRONING

Day after day, Magani and Jara Billy had been coming here,

secretly, to work on the trumpet.

Along its length, they had painted designs of goannas,

large lizards, and the symbol they used was exactly the same

as the one Magani had painted on the bark.

Goannas, clearly, played an important part in the Yurlungur cult.

But how...I did not yet know.

Among the goannas, there also appeared another symbol

that I recognised.

This was the design that I had seen on the bark and asked Magani about -

the clue that had led us here in the first place.

This was the emblem of the Yurlungur spirit itself.

Although a great deal of work had already been lavished

on the trumpet, there was much more yet to be done.

Magani said that all these preparations had to be made

each time the ceremony was held.

I asked him why, if the ceremony was repeated again and again,

they couldn't use the same trumpet.

And he replied that after the ritual was over,

the trumpet was quite worthless, and they threw it away.

Usually, they buried it in a sandbank down by the river,

so that women and children wouldn't see it.

Sometimes, he said, they might dig it up again on a later occasion

and repaint it.

But usually, they didn't bother

and started afresh with a new piece of wood.

The act of painting, it seemed, was an end in itself,

a part of the ritual.

Already, the trumpet was a sacred object.

Every now and then, work stopped,

and Magani lay down to blow the trumpet

while Jara Billy sang a chant to the Yurlungur spirit.

For each of the designs had to be "sung in" to make them good.

Once, as I sat beside it, watching Magani paint,

I unthinkingly reached across it to pick up something.

Magani reproved me.

It was wrong and disrespectful to reach across Yurlungur in this way.

On another occasion, Magani's eyes suddenly filled with tears,

and he had to put down his brush.

No-one spoke for several minutes.

Later, I asked Jara Billy why Magani had been so deeply moved,

and he replied that the last time Magani had painted such a trumpet

was for the funeral ceremony of his father.

And so, day after day, Magani and Jara Billy continued to work.

When they left each evening to return to their families,

the trumpet was carefully hidden away in the back of the shelter

and covered with bark and leaves, so that no woman or child,

or man from another clan, should set eyes on it.

When all the painting was at last finished,

the trumpet was still not complete.

Bands of scarlet feathers from the breast of a parakeet

had to be carefully bound round each end.

And now, once more,

a song had to be chanted to Yurlungur to sanctify the completed trumpet.

CHANTING AND DRONING

The ritual painting of Yurlungur has been going on for over a week now

in that secret shelter away in the bush.

And for much of that time, we've been sitting with the men,

watching them painting,

and trying to discover the legends that surround Yurlungur.

It seems that, in the Dreamtime,

that's to say before there were any people in this land,

there were two ancestral sisters.

Their names were Boaliri and "Missal-goee".

And they came walking through this country,

naming the animals and the plants as they came.

"Missal-goee" was expecting a child.

Boaliri gathered a lot of food, including a lot of goannas,

for their evening meal.

And they went down to a water hole by the Goyder River,

which is just over there.

And there, "Missal-goee" had her baby.

It was a boy and it was called Julunggul.

Unknown to the sisters, the water hole was the home of a great serpent.

And in the depths of the water, he heard the noise of the sisters

and he came out.

Then there followed a great battle,

and at the end of this battle,

Boaliri, "Missal-goee" - the two sisters -

and the baby and all the goannas were eaten by the serpent.

And the serpent, whose name was Yurlungur,

then looked up into the sky and blew, and the sky filled with heavy clouds.

And then there was a great storm, which lasted for a long time.

And Yurlungur, the serpent, arched up in the sky, like a rainbow,

and he spoke to the other serpents in this country,

telling them of what had happened.

And he...his voice was thunder and his tongue was lightning.

When the rains came to the end, Yurlungur returned to the water hole,

and before he disappeared he spat out the two sisters,

and the baby boy, and all the goannas.

It seems, in fact, that Yurlungur is the symbol of the rainy season,

the rainy season that is due to begin here

in about three or four weeks' time.

He figures as a great trumpet in nearly all the important ceremonies

of these particular tribes around here.

The one that they're preparing for now is one which is carried out

by the men of the goanna totem, the goanna clan.

It is not a rain-making ceremonial,

but a ceremonial in which they re-enact the legends

and observe the secret designs and the secret dances

so that the young men of the tribe may know of the cult of Yurlungur.

During the dance, the trumpet - Yurlungur -

will emerge for the first time out of this shelter,

and it will eat up the goanna men,

symbolised by the trumpet being passed over them.

And then, at the end of the dance, the rains will come to an end

and the men themselves will leap out as goannas

that are being regurgitated to take their life in this land.

But before any of that can happen,

the men must have painted on their flesh

the secret symbol of the goanna.

They painted the goanna in exactly the same way as the one we had seen

first on the bark painting and then on the Yurlungur trumpet.

The shading, the representation of the heart and gut,

the position of the legs - all were the same.

The execution of each design lasted as long as an hour,

and while it went on, the men lay motionless with eyes closed,

almost as though they were in a trance.

They had assembled here early in the morning,

but it wasn't until seven hours later that all were decorated.

They sat about in a group,

awaiting the beginning of their act of worship,

when, together, they would enter the shelter

and lie motionless in the shade, waiting to be summoned by the snake.

TRUMPET PLAYS

As the voice of the snake sounded, so it called out to the goanna men

from the shelter of branches that represented the sacred well

by the Goyder River.

CHANTING AND DRONING

As they came, they postured before the snake,

rearing up as a goanna will do when alarmed.

In groups of two or three, they crawled out from the shelter

to kneel in the dust in front of the roaring snake.

At last, all the men have been called out,

and Yurlungur the python passes over them, swallowing them.

And now the moment comes for their regurgitation.

So, Magani showed us that painting for him and his people

played an essential part in their lives,

a vital element in their magical and religious beliefs.

But whereas bark painting and body painting

and painting of objects like Yurlungur still goes on,

most of the cave painting, it seems, came to an end about 50 years ago.

But you can still find old men who will tell you

that the reason these cave paintings were made was also a magical one.

They believe that, when they painted the picture of a barramundi fish,

they were working a magic which ensured that the barramundi fish

would continue to be abundant.

But are all these paintings magical?

Well, here and there in these caves you can find a painting

where it seems as though the artist made it

simply because he was noting down

something that interested or amused him.

Here is an old flintlock pistol that possibly dates

from the time when the white man first came to this country.

And elsewhere, you can see pictures of rifles...

and ships.

Maybe this is art for art's sake.

Certainly Magani and the painters like him

make their bark paintings not for any magical reason,

but simply because they enjoy doing so,

and because they can sell them.

Already their paintings are becoming more widely appreciated,

and the few examples that come out of this part of the world

are eagerly bought by private collectors and museums

and art galleries for ever-increasing prices.

Maybe as the demand increases, their work will deteriorate

and become slick and mechanical.

But, so far, that hasn't happened.

So far, although many of the painters of Arnhem Land

are increasingly in contact with the outside world,

their lives are still governed by their tribal rituals

and they continue to employ the symbols prescribed by their beliefs.

Many of their paintings, though stylised, are easily understood.

Yurlungur, the snake, appears again and again -

the zigzag borders framing this painting

prove to be the snake's body.

But often the designs are so stylised that they are totally unrecognisable,

except to the initiated.

These are the tracks of birds running between the bulbs of water lilies.

Sometimes the patterns are totally abstract and geometrical,

and the finished composition bears a strong resemblance to the pictures

of some modern European abstract painters.

And so the paintings of the artists of Arnhem land,

which are so intimately associated with their tribal beliefs,

not only hark back to the very origins of art in prehistory,

but seem also to have foreshadowed some of the latest

and most sophisticated styles of 20th-century painting.

CHANTING, DIDGERIDOO PLAYS