Australian signposts

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 16

Australian signposts

By

LYNETTE WILLIAMS

Although the Australian bad no formal writing before the arrival of the Europeans, several tribes did have a special means of communication. This took the form of signposts, or message sticks, to indicate the direction in which travellers had gone when leaving their camp site. The messages involved the description of a topographical feature, the naming of which concerned the activities of their gods. These sign-posts, or “toas” to give them their Aboriginal name, are made of wood, usually a trimmed stick or flat board between 18cm and 50cm long, with a lump of day at one end. Some have clay plastered all over the wood.

They are completely painted, predominantly with red ochre, often with yellow, white, and black designs as well Sometimes pieces of twigs, leaves, bone, or feathers may -have been pushed into the clay before it dried; and in many the lump of day has been moulded into a shape such as a human hand or a bird’s head.

In 1923, the Canterbury Museum received four teas from the South Australian Museum as part of an exchange. These teas were only a few of the 322 which had been collected before 1916 by the Rev. J. G. Reuther. For 18 years, Reuther was in charge of the Lutheran Mission Station at Kallalpaninna, east of Lake Eyre in South Australia. The story each toa has to tell was recorded, giving anthropologists a great insight into the Aboriginal tribal cultures’ spiritual values and symbols.

Of the toas in the Canterbury Musuem collection (see photo), one (the longest) is from the Ngamani tribe and the other three are from the Diari tribe. These people believed that legendary demigods, Muramuras, formed the landscape, and for each stream, lake, hill, waterhole, or plain they had an associated story relating to the

activities of a particular Moramura.

All things were named by the Muramuras; trees, hushes, animals, birds, useful grasses, and so on, the name relating to a riirtmgnivhing characteristic. Such a name might be attached to a particular topographical feature, and then the name, with its story, applied to a toa.

For instance, for the toa called Winparawonpani (second from bottom in photo), the travellers who painted the toa are saying that they have gone to the Winpara hiH This hiH received its name because the Muramura named Yelkabalubaluna found the hiH overgrown with Winpara bush, a tuft of which was attached to the head of the

toa. Unfortunately, most of these twigs have broken off, but their state still remain.

The stories of the other toas are as follows:

Womadundruni: “to the eggs in the body of the woma snake.” The white-painted clay knob signifies a chalky hill on which the female Muramura, Ngattanimarumaru, once killed a snake, in the body of which were eggs.

The two knobs on the end of the Toa Dampuwuluni represent two round hills which were discovered by the Muramura, Turupiwulana. The rest of this toa is painted red and white indicating a plain, the soil of which is partly limestone

and partly reddish. The final toa, Kudnakirini, says that the travellers have gone “to the dysentery plain.” On this plain (represented by the white knob), which was sparsely covered with diked grass (yellow spots), the Muramura Ngurakalana had an attack of dysentery. The black stripe denotes a waterhole surrounded by bushes (yellow spots).

' The South Australian Musuem is planning a major exhibition of all known South Australian toas, and the four from Canterbury Museum win be lent to them for this purpose.