Wandawuy. Mäna the Ancestral Shark in its epic travels comes through this way. These ancestors try to trap Mäna in the freshwater by means of these traps in the waterways. They fail. The powers and physical strength of the Shark overcome the efforts of mere mortals. Mäna’s ire and thrashing tail smash the trap and muddy the water.

They witness however the strength of Mäna and sing his actions, the thrashing of his tail for one, the muddying or contamination of the water. The black lines having reference to the trap, the coloured verticals referring to differing states of the freshwater - the source of Djapu soul. At ceremony appropriate participants for mortuary rites enter the shelter (woven together like the unsuccessful trap) where the deceased has been lying in state. Sacred spears topped with stingray barbs, ,manifestations of Mäna’s teeth, stand up alongside the shelter.

The sacred song cycles of Mäna in the water at Wandawuy are intoned with music from the Yidaki (didjeridu) and Bilma(clapsticks). At the prescribed time at the conclusion of ceremony the dancers crash through the deceased’s shelter imitating the actions of Mäna at the trap. This action has reference to the release of the deceased’s soul, back to the sacred waters of Wandawuy to be reunited with its ancestors awaiting rebirth.

Recent surveys by Anglo scientists in Top End rivers in Kakadu have revealed the existence of a species of shark whose life cycle takes place entirely in the freshwater. A genus otherwise unknown to Western thought in Australia but present in PNG now known in English as Speartooth.

Wandawuy literally means place of the Sharks head where in the larger context of the song cycles of Mäna’s journey his head came to rest after being butchered and distributed through the land.