Waruwiya [soak] and Pilalyi rock hole. I lived around here with my mother and father. Nyirla is our Country. I was walking around everywhere in that Country, that was the last time. [Then] we travelled to them waterholes on the Canning Stock Road, until we came closer to Natawalu. That’s where we saw a helicopter for the first time.
The people of the Western Desert moved across their land in a rhythm determined by the seasons and by their social and ceremonial duties.
The coming of the drovers, however, introduced different kinds of movement and different reasons to move. The drovers brought with them intriguing new things from the world beyond the desert: beef, tea, flour, sugar, tobacco, new medicines.
The desert people sometimes followed the drovers and helped them in return for such goods. In the end, many followed the stock route out of the desert and onto cattle stations, such as Billiluna, or missions, like Balgo and Jigalong. But not all families took this path. And not everyone walked out of the desert, as is shown by the story of ‘Helicopter’ Tjungurrayi.
In 1957 a mining survey party came across a group of people living near Natawalu (Well 40). Some of these people had never seen white men before. None had seen a helicopter.
Ten-year-old Tjungurrayi was seriously ill, so the survey team flew him and his mother’s sister, who was also ill, north to Balgo for medical attention. When they failed to return, their worried family members began travelling north in groups.
Charlie Wallabi (Walapayi) Tjungurrayi, 2007:
My young brother [Helicopter] was so sick; he had sores everywhere and he was helpless, a little boy. I grabbed my little brother and showed them. So kartiya looked at his sores and said, ‘OK, we’ll take him,’ because he was so sick. So I asked the kartiya, ‘Are you going to bring him back?’ He was speaking his language and I was speaking my language. I kept on saying, ‘Are you going to bring him back?’
I waited, waited, waited for long and I wondered, ‘They’re not bringing him back!’ Nothing. It was getting a bit longer, and I said to myself, I think I’ll go after him north. From there I kept walking right, long way, all the way to Balgo.
The initial contact between the helicopter crew and the local families was marked by fear and confusion on both sides. Patrick Olodoodi (Alatuti) Tjungurrayi remembers those first cross-cultural exchanges:
It landed. We said, ′Manurrkunurrku [wasp] sat down’. We didn’t call it helicopter then. We called it manurrkunurrku. ‘Well, let’s go look for it,’ we said. That’s when we came down from the sandhill carrying spears.
James Ferguson, the helicopter pilot, found himself confronted with a group of Aboriginal men dragging their spears between their toes: ‘Matman grabbed the .303 and I pulled out my revolver but all was OK. They stuck their spears in the ground’. Patrick recalls that it was his brother, Charlie Wallabi (Walapayi) Tjungurrayi, who intervened:
‘Put them spears down,’ he told us. We put them down and started walking towards him.
Despite the initial tension, relations between the crew and the family group warmed as they interacted and shared food. These encounters are remembered with fond humour today:
We asked Brandy [Tjungurrayi] to go and ask them if we can get kapi [water] from the well. He went and told that kartiya, [in Kukatja] ’Are you listening to me? Kapi!′
‘Kopi? Ahh, you want coffee,’ [the whitefella] said. He filled up a billycan with coffee and gave it to him. Then he brought it over to us. I had a look and saw that it was black. ‘What the hell is this black water?’ I said. It smelt different too.
All of the artists featured in this section were witness to, or had relatives who were present during, the events at Natawalu.
![A red and black horizontal striped painting on linen with a red, cream and black horizontal striped section across the centre. Beneath the cream stripes there is a black disc with a cream edge. The stripes start to veer downwards to the right underneath the disc. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0007/714625/Helicopter-Tjungurray_2.jpg)
Waruwiya by Helicopter Tjungurrayi
![A painting on brown linen with orange, red and white vertical stripes with a darker central section. In the centre there are two white and orange circles. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0008/714626/Natawalu_3.jpg)
Natawalu by Helicopter Tjungurrayi
![A closely dotted painting on brown linen featuring a rectangular section with uneven vertical stripes in dark pink, light pink, maroon, and brown in the bottom right corner. This pink continues up into the top section of the painting, ending in a point. In the lower left section are stripe patterns in brown and dotted stripes of yellow, burgundy and white, with a spearhead-like motif in pink and white dots. The middle has uneven horizontal stripes in yellow and white with a brown shape with a dotted yellow net-like pattern on it. In the top section of the painting there are vertical burgundy and white stripes to the left and orange, yellow, burgundy, white and brown dotted vertical shapes to the right. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/714627/Christine-Yukenbarri_4.jpg)
Winpurpula by Christine Yukenbarri
![A textured heavily dotted multicoloured painting on brown linen with three purple and pink dotted ovals creating a triangular feature in the centre of the painting. The painting is covered with dot filled sections in pastels of yellow, pink, apricot, lavender and white. There are nine round dark pink shapes spaced across the canvas, and covered in a combination of yellow, orange or pink dots. In the top right corner are two dark pink parallel horizontal curved dotted lines, and at the top centre is a spoked wheel shaped motif of dots in yellow and pink on the black background. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0010/714628/Elizabeth-Nyumi_5.jpg)
Mangarri (Food) by Elizabeth Nyumi
![A painting on brown linen of concentric rectangles in yellow and red with a black and white border. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0011/714629/nma.img-ci20092308-009-wm-vs1.jpg)
Nyaru by Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi
![A painting on canvas of slightly wavy multicoloured vertical lines of squares in light and dark shades of orange, yellow, black, pink, green, blue, and red. These lines of squares overlay vertical lines of solid colour in orange, yellow, maroon, black, green, and blue. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0003/714630/Brandy-Tjungurrayi_7.jpg)
Nyaru by Brandy Tjungurrayi
![A painting on brown linen with horizontal rows of vertical strokes in yellow, brown, burgundy, orange, red and white on a black background. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0004/714631/Josephine-Nangala_8.jpg)
Untilted by Josephine Nangala
![A long rectangular painting on brown linen of slightly wavy horizontal stripes. The top half of the painting has brown alternating with orange, yellow and cream stripes and the bottom half has pale pink stripes alternating with pink, beige and yellow stripes. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0005/714632/Miriam-Napanangka_9.jpg)
Untitled by Miriam Napanangka
![A painting on brown linen of a concentric circle with radiating lines within each ring, on a background of purple. The colours include grey with pink, cream with dark green, yellow with purple-pink and orange with cream. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0006/714633/Brandy-Tjungurrayi_10.jpg)
Nyakungtjuungku by Lucy Loomoo
![A brown toned painting on brown linen of horizontal brown wavy lines with white dotted lines between them on a solid black background. The lines start from the lower left corner and flow to the top right. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0007/714634/Richard-Yukenbarri-Tjakamarra_11.jpg)
Kalyuyangku by Richard Yukenbarri Tjakamarra
![An acrylic on canvas stretched dot and line painting. The artwork has a red background, white and yellow dots and has a network of black lines that join at black circles. The black lines have yellow dots painted across them. Three groups of black arrows (bird tracks) are painted at the lower section of the work. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0008/714635/nma.img-ci20102465-031-wm-vs1.jpg)
Kulilli by Wimmitji Tjapangarti
![A rectangular painting on brown linen with yellow-brown multiple lines in an upside down U shape divided by white dotted lines. In the centre is a circle with white dots while to the left side the lines change direction. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/714636/Miriam-Napanangka_13.jpg)
Katajilkarr to Kaningarra by Miriam Napanangka
![A pink toned horizontally striped textured painting on canvas with rows of geometric patterns of concentric squares, stripes, crenellated line and pattern blocks. The rows are slightly diagonal moving from the lower left corner to the upper right section. At the top there are lighter colours of white, orange, pale pink and yellow with squares, crenellated lines and stripes. Then there is a blue and maroon crenellated line. Below this the central section has orange, yellow, dark pink and a bit of white in brick pattern, squares, crenellation and stripes. The bottom section contains a row of alternate blue and pink rectangles then crenellation and stripes in pink, dark pink, orange brown, yellow and a little white. The bottom edge has the measurement '183 x 122cm' while the top edge has the code 'PO/112/DT'. In the bottom right corner is an arrow in blue marker. - click to view larger image](https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0010/714637/Patrick-Tjungurrayi_14.jpg)
Canning Stock Route Country by Patrick Tjungurrayi
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