fishing nets

Strung in lines and piled in heaps outside the Art Centre are these turquoise and blue strings of nets which on closer inspection are crusted with shells, sponges and threaded with red, yellow and green.

Traditionally pandanis palm leaves were used to weave into baskets and dilly bags and still are, but now old and abandoned nets and lines are stripped back to basics ( as the pandinis leaf is) and the fibres woven into a functional object.

The art of the Warnindilyakwa people is very influenced by the Gulf waters surrounding the island as are the totems of the island clan groups. Dugongs, turtles, crabs and sharks, dolphins and a myriad of fish and the seabirds that live on the shore and circle the waters and the winds that change with the seasons.

The Macassan trader fishermen from Sulawesi were the first known 'foreign people' to come to the island, arriving on the "barra' wind, the n-e monsoon, and leaving with the mamarika wind, the s-e trade winds.
Fishing for trepang, the local people traded these fishing rights for cloth and steel, beads, dugout canoes and tamarinds.
Their legacy remains in language and art and the tamarind trees that now grow 'on island.'