24-763 – Yikartu Bumba

“When I was a little girl, my father and mother took me around [Yulparija Country, north of Manyjilyjarra Country]. We travelled with my grandmother and all the family, we travelled with my sisters and brothers. We went from place to place, stopping in one place, hunting around and stopping in another place. We visited all the yinta (permanent springs). We used to walk around when I was a little girl.

[Later] I lost my mother and my grandmother, but my other grandmother kept looking after me. I was still travelling with my mother’s mother when I got married and had my daughter, Barli. When I was travelling with my husband and all the family, we went south to Wirnpa and Kurturarra. We stayed around there for a time and then went northeast, on the tableland. During the wet season we would travel out from the yinta across the tableland… We would walk together, hunting as we went.”

– Yikartu Bumba

Kurturarra is a yinta (permanent spring) located within the largest of the salt lakes in the Percival Lakes region, and surrounded by acacia trees. The Percival Lakes form a string of ephemeral salt lakes in the north of Western Australia, extending across a distance of 350km. They lie at the southern region of the Great Sandy Desert and east of the Karlamilyi (Rudall River) region.

The region surrounding Kurturarra was formed by Wirnpa, one of the most powerful of the ancestral jila (snake) men and the last to travel the desert during the Jukurrpa (Dreaming). Wirnpa is a rainmaking jila who lived and hunted in the Percival Lakes area. His travels are described in the songs and stories of many language groups across the Western Desert, even those far removed from his home site. In his epic travels, Wirnpa met and feasted with many other ancestral beings, exchanged ceremonial objects, and created a series of different laws and ceremonies. When he finally returned home, he searched for his many children only to discover that they had already died. They had laid down and become the salt springs of the Percival Lakes. Wirnpa wept for his children before himself transforming into a snake and entering the soak where he still resides. 

As Yikartu describes in her account, she moved around this area seasonally with her grandmother, husband and daughter, walking between water sources, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time knowledge of water sources was critical for survival, and today Martu Country is still defined in terms of the location and type of water. Each of the hundreds of claypans, rockholes, waterholes, soaks and springs found in the Martu desert homelands is known by name, location, quality and seasonal availability through real life experience and the recounting of Jukurrpa narratives.