Noreen Parker
Maralinga (The Bomb), 2023
acrylic on canvas
76 x 56 cm
23-191
When my mother was a young girl about 15 years, the people were living in the bush in wiltjas in the Spinifex Country. My mother told me this story, how...
When my mother was a young girl about 15 years, the people were living in the bush in wiltjas in the Spinifex
Country. My mother told me this story, how the people were all sitting down and they saw a big light and then lots of smoke, the smoke just went up and up and up. The people were frightened they thought it was a walpa pulka (big storm) or the wanampi (rainbow serpent). My Uncle, my mother’s brother had gone to hunt bush tucker in Maralinga Country, he never came back, he died from that bomb, that’s a true story’. In this painting you can see the families camped in their wiltjas and the white people who brought the bomb,
camping with their army trucks.
Country. My mother told me this story, how the people were all sitting down and they saw a big light and then lots of smoke, the smoke just went up and up and up. The people were frightened they thought it was a walpa pulka (big storm) or the wanampi (rainbow serpent). My Uncle, my mother’s brother had gone to hunt bush tucker in Maralinga Country, he never came back, he died from that bomb, that’s a true story’. In this painting you can see the families camped in their wiltjas and the white people who brought the bomb,
camping with their army trucks.