25-573 – Ngamaru Bidu

“My ngurra (home Country, camp), I been born near to Karanyal, my mother’s Country. Mummy been travelling here.”

– Ngamaru Bidu

Karanyal (Canning Stock Route Well 20) is located between Parnngurr Aboriginal Community and Kumpupirntily (Kumpupintily, Lake Disappointment). This site lies within Ngamaru’s ngurra (home Country, camp), the area which she knew intimately and travelled extensively with her family in her youth. As Ngamaru here states, this water source lies close to her birthplace, Martilliri (Canning Stock Route Well 22), which is just northeast of Karanyal. 

The intersection of the Canning Stock Route with Karanyal also made this a site of early contact with Europeans for many Martu then living a pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) life in the desert. Following the route’s construction, Martu encountered Europeans and other Martu working as cattle drovers as they would travel up and down the Stock Route from water source to water source. Increasingly, pujimanpa (desert dwellers) followed the route to newly established ration depots, mission and pastoral stations. They were drawn to the route in search of food, by a sense of curiosity, or by loneliness. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, most of the desert family groups had left the desert. Eventually, these factors combined with an extreme and prolonged drought in the 1960s to prompt the few remaining pujimanpa to move in from the desert.