Details of Yathikpa (with stand)

Catalog Number : 26665
Size : 115cm x 16cm x 16cm
Medium : natural earth pigment on wood
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This painting is set in the ocean waters in the Yathikpa region, near Blue Mud Bay. It is drawn from the sacred songs or manikay.
Two ancestral figures, Burrak and Garramatji sat at a particular shade and worked together to make their rope and then went hunting for dugong in the Yathikpa area. They travelled in a canoe named Badapada and carried with them a harpoon named Gutjulu. Their hunting took them into forbidden and spiritually dangerous area near the sacred rock Martjala and they threw the Gutjulu and missed the dugong. The harpoon with the rope went into rock and caused a fire. The miny'tji design, painted in the background of the painting on this pole is a madarrpa clan design representing both saltwater and fire. The fire spread into the rock and into the harpoon. The ocean boiled and the canoe of the two men capsized and they died. Those two men, Burrak and Garramatji, turned into Yikawanga and Ngurruguyamirri. This can be understood as an oral and painted history of an actual tsunami in geologic times.

Yathikpa is fire-imbued saltwater from which Baru - the metamorphised Mardarrpa man in crocodile form brought fire ashore. The fire had its origins at Yathikpa and was first 'carried' by Baru the Ancestral Crocodile who took it to sea. Fire represents a profound knowledge that takes wisdom and courage to handle correctly.