25-713 – Elizabeth Toby

“Punmu hill, that’s all the little rocks. That’s the wood, big ones. We camped there, eagle’s nest in Punmu, dreamtime story”

– Elizabeth Toby

In Martu the word Yabu translates to rock or hill. Punmu Yabu is the site of a large rocky hill near the community of Punmu. Elizabeth visited this Jukurrpa site on a camp with the local school.

The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed both human and nonhuman forms. These beings shaped what had been a formless landscape; creating waters, plants, animals, and people. At the same time they provided cultural protocols for the people they created, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment. At their journey’s end, the ancestral beings transformed themselves into important waters, hills, rocks, and even constellations.