Kaakurutintjinya (Lake Macdonald) in Western Australia is a dry salt lake significant to narratives surrounding Kuninka (the ancestral Native Quoll) and his desire for revenge against the Tingarri men from Yawalyurrunya. While walking near Kaakurutintjinya, Kuninka came upon a piece of emu fat and the tracks of the men who had dropped it. They had been hunting in his country, cooking the emu at Tikartika east of the lake, and they hadn’t given any to Kuninka, the boss of the country. He became angry because they had sneaked and not shared with him. He told his two sons to get ready, and he set off west to follow the Tingarri men’s tracks. He passed the Possum people at the claypans of Yiitjurunya, where the possums were protecting a man who had eloped with a wrong wife from Warlpiri country. Terrifying them with his power, he headed west and then south, to Yawalyurru, where the Tingarri men were underground. He opened their hiding place with his throwing stick, made them come out and sent them on their way—under his authority, as punyunyu (novices)— to Kaakurutintjinya. After they stopped around Kulkurtanya, where Kuninka told them to wait, the Tingarri men were marched up to Kaakurutintjinya where they were killed with hail and lightning by Kuninka’s two sons. Exhausted by this exercise of their powers, the sons died and turned into snakes at the site.

It’s not surprising that Morris should follow in his father’s footsteps, that he should take to painting in earnest the very day after his father’s death. This speaks less about vocational opportunity than the vital role which painting plays in cultural maintenance and custodial responsibilities. Morris’s work however is certainly not a carbon-copy of his father’s despite their shared iconography and cultural imperatives.