Shark and Cycad
Artist
Nancy McDinny
(1957)
Datebefore 2006
Object number00042368
NamePainting
MediumAcrylic on canvas
Dimensions1250 x 1520 x 25 mm
Copyright© Nancy McDinny
ClassificationsArt
Credit LineANMM Collection
DescriptionAcrylic on canvas by Nancy McDinny, a Yanyuwa and Garrwa woman from Borrolooa. The painting is titled 'Shark and Cycad'.
This work comes from the Yanyuwa song Tiger Shark Dreaming - telling the story of how the tiger shark left Queensland with a bundle of cycad nuts and after a long journey and an altercation with the rock wallaby he reached Manankurra on the Wearyan River near Borroloola in the Northern Territory.
Nancy McDinny is a Garawa traditional owner. Her language group is Garawa.HistoryNancy McDinny hails from Borroloola, south west of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is a wild country where crocodile infested rivers tumble through long and treacherous plains of deep sand and coastal scrub before making their way to the sea. For European setters, this country represented Australia's last great frontier. To its Indigenous inhabitants, however, these lands had been the physical and spiritual home for more than 40,000 years. With the opening in the 1870s of the Coast Track - one of Australia's largest and most profitable stock routes these two cultures were thrown suddenly and often violently together.
Nancy Mc Dinny tells the story of the Tiger Shark Dreaming;
"Shark travelled from Queensland carrying cycad seeds, travelled around all the Pellew Islands all the way up the river to Manankurra. And there he threw all the seeds, today you see really old cycads growing along the riverbank. Rock wallaby on Canderline Island hunted the shark away from there."
SignificanceIn her paintings, Nancy McDinny recalls the stories of the Gulf frontier as told to her by her father Dinny McDinny and her grandfather Jim Ross. These are the stories of the traditional practices and the impact of pastoral capital on the Garrwa and Yanyuwa people. The accuracy and attention to detail in Nancy's depictions presents a profound vindication of oral-sources and a significant visual account, from an Indigenous perspective, of the arrival of Europeans to Borroloola.
