Macassin Collecting Trepang (2)

Artist Nancy McDinny (1957)

Datebefore 2006

Object number00042369

NamePainting

MediumAcrylic on canvas

Dimensions740 x 1240 x 25 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionFrom as early as the 1600s Macassan sailors from Sulawesi sailed each year to northern Australia. They called this land Marege. The Macassans came to collect trepang (also called teripang, sea slug, sea cucumber, bêche-de-mer, iriko) an exotic delicacy much demanded by Chinese. While debate continues about when these expeditions began, it was Australia’s first ‘export’ industry. The visitors established camps and built smokehouses. The beach was a place of business and interaction between Macassans and the Indigenous people. Citing ‘health’ reasons, government authorities ended the centuries-old trade in 1906. 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. The old people use to work for the Macassens collecting trepang around the Sir Pellew Islands group in the Gulf not far from the mouth of the McArthur River mouth. In return for the trepang, Nancy's dad, mum and uncles to would get tobacco, flour, sugar, tea leaf and other material. 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.