When I’m painting, I’m at home on my ngurra in my head, thinking about Marrapinti stories and songs, Minyma Tjuta [all the women] it makes me feel good, palya [good].

The lines in this painting represent the sandhills at Marrapinti, where a large group of ancestral women camped. While here, the women made nose bones. Nose bones are a form of ornamentation in which a hole is pierced in the nose web, and a bone is inserted. These ornaments were originally used by both men and women, but are now only worn by the older generation for ceremonies. Then the women continued traveling east, passing through a number of important locations and gathering kampurarrpa (desert Raisins).

I cried the first time I heard Mantua Nangala telling me a story about my grandmothers and other old ladies, and how they lived in the past. Passing onto the young ones so we can keep carrying on Tjukurrpa, stories from our elders and from our past.