In August 1988 I travelled to Arnhem Land to research artists’ biographies and revisited Marrkolidjban outstation. I was surprised to find the place throbbing with the excitement of many children and families. What I had known in 1982–83 as a ramshackle collection of corrugated-iron shacks and stringy-bark shelters adorned with hanging dilly bags was now improved by a grand two-storey school of ochre mudbrick. Clouds of dust threw up from children in races and some parents were lining up to throw spears at a cardboard kangaroo. It was a school sports day organised by the outstation teachers and supported by the Kuninjku families of many surrounding communities. The teacher Murray Garde had learnt to speak Kuninjku and there was strong bilingual programming. The children’s motivation was tangible.

Away from the dust and in deep shade sat John Mawurndjul working intently on a large and complex painting. I watched his slow strokes of thin linework with the viscous paint as he finished a section before putting the bark aside and reaching for a smoke. I asked what the work was about and this provoked his characteristic frown of consideration, which transformed immediately into beaming amusement. The work was Ngalyod (Female Rainbow Serpent) and he traced with his finger the interlaced figures that were hidden in the composition: three Rainbow Serpents with horns that swivelled together and around the bark. The figures almost lost in pulsing bands of rarrk (cross-hatching).

Mawurndjul pointed out that I should know this story since I had seen the place. I remembered the searing-hot rock face where Berk, the Death Adder, chased another group of creator beings that transformed into boulders; the towering rock with the bones of Buluwana, who was killed by Ngalyod in these events; and Buluwana’s head, which emerges as a rock prism from the ground. By contrast, the nearby grove of palm trees and waterfall at Dilebang are home to Ngalyod and its babies. Rainbows glistening in the waterfall reveal Ngalyod’s continuing presence.
With characteristic pride in his achievement, Mawurndjul brings the painting into the light for me to take a photograph. I see that the work is huge – some 60 cm taller than the artist, even with the big hair of the time. He has revealed a world of creator beings that exist inside the earth and within its cool waters. Energy swirls outwards from the paint, now shining in the sun. Mawurndjul dances this story. It is also a re-presentation of ancestral rock paintings of Rainbow Serpents that exist in the shelter at Dilebang.

Mawurndjul wrapped the sparkling painting in an old sheet and we went to join the sports day. He was picked up later that day by Murray Garde to travel to the opening of a major international rock-art congress in Darwin. The Maningrida art advisor, Diane Moon, had organised a dramatic exhibit of huge Kuninjku barks to adorn the walls of the convention centre’s main auditorium. The display forcefully made the point that great, and living, artists from Arnhem Land were present. Soon after, Ngalyod (Female Rainbow Serpent) started a new life when it was purchased by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, and I feel warm to see it there sometimes when I step in from the hustle of Circular Quay.