Dorish Bush Nungarrayi 277-24

Nyunmanu is a Dingo Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory. Most of the dingoes and their pups from this place rose up into the sky and became stars. However, the ancestral mother Dingo and her pup had gone out hunting and were too tired to rise up, so they turned into a large rock that marks the place of this sacred Dreaming. The custodians of this Tjukurrpa are Nungarrayi, Tjungarrayi, Napaltjarri and Tjapaltjarri women and men. The circles in this story often represent important waterholes. The roundels extending from the circles are the designs the women paint on their breasts during ceremony. In this painting Doris is remembering a day in her childhood where, as a little girl, she walked alone past the hill, the creek and the rock holes at Nyunmanu, which always had water. She saw dingos living in the caves and a Spiritual Woman dancing near one of the waterholes. This Spiritual Woman told Doris that this site was her home dreaming place.