A Day to Myself – The Tiwi Islands

I was really impressed with the aboriginal artwork I was seeing around Katherine and Darwin. Dots are not really my thing, I much prefer more linear artworks. I’d studied aboriginal art for a semester in Uni about a million years ago, but I’d completely forgotten about the big differences in styles around Australia. If you go to the National Gallery in Canberra, there is a wonderful installation of poles near the foyer which clearly depicts the different styles throughout our land.

We had come to the linear part – yippee! The artists here do incredible cross-hatching with really fine brushes, and I had already spent a long time watching some artists at work at the Mindil Markets.

I had read about a day tour to the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, where you could see many more artists at work and even get to do some work yourself. At $250 per person, we decided it was a thing I would do alone. A day to myself! Yippee!!

We booked at the Visitor Information Centre, and I needed to be at the dock to catch my ferry at 7am. After much discussion, and with tired children the night before, and with lovely neighbours, we decided to be incredibly dodgy and leave the kids asleep in bed in Bertha all by themselves. We left a note and the spare mobile on the bed and they were MOST disappointed to wake up a mere 5 minutes before Dunc got back to them.

It was a 2 hour ferry trip out to Bathurst Island. Bathurst and Melville Island together are called the Tiwi Islands, and the aboriginal community there is similar and yet distinctly different to mainland communities. They have always intermingled by dugout canoe in the past, so there are definite connections, but there are also definite differences – particularly in style.

When we came close to land, I came to the slow realization that there was no dock. No jetty. I had visions of smaller tender boats coming out to collect us, or having to wade through knee-deep water, but instead they asked us to make sure we were seated, pointed the boat at the shore and drove in fast! We were beached! They let down a gang ramp and we were able to wander off to the buses. And here was where I made the discovery that there are TWO different tours of the Tiwi Islands. And in fact I was booked onto the one which DIDN’T allow us to do our own artwork. I was a little disappointed and frustrated that the Info Centre hadn’t given me any other option. Fortunately on the boat trip on the way back, I was able to chat to those who did the other tour and worked out that they saw very little of the town and only did basic artworks which would have bored me anyway. Phew!

So I boarded my bus, along with 11 other people and we headed off around the town of Nguiu to see the sights.

And what sights!

In the 1980s the missionary nuns started community Arts centres and trained the locals in screen printing. They set up the Tiwi Design Aboriginal Corporation and the entire community has run with design ever since! Everything is ornately decorated utilizing their love of repeated patterns and heavy use of line. I was in heaven!

This is the wall of the local primary school. Can you see the besser bricks under there??

Here’s a tin shed, and the other wall of the same shed:

How about a toilet? Or two…

The check in counter for the international airport:

Some more artwork at the airport. I love how they use the traditional colours (in solarguard paints!) but are then not limited to those colours elsewhere.

Our day tour took us to the local museum to learn about their dreamtime stories and cultural beliefs. It was the first time I had the ‘skins’ theory explained so thoroughly in a way I could finally grasp. Its really quite incredible to conceive that so very many thousands of years ago, people could grasp the ramifications of inbreeding and come up with a sophisticated method of ensuring that people could only reproduce with someone 4 generations removed from themselves, and 1/64^th of their own bloodline. Mindblowing.

We stopped for morning tea and got to watch some of the local women painting shells, which we could then purchase. Fuss-pot that I am, I only really liked 1 or 2 of them so leapt in first when we had the chance to choose them to purchase. I LOVED that they were $10 each and the money went directly to the artist. We got to experience a display of traditional dancing and a smoking welcome ceremony, all quite surprising to this little black duck who thought she was going to be making artworks! LOL.

We visited 2 artist’s workshops and got to see them screenprinting. The screens are designed by the locals, but produced in Darwin at the university there. All fabric is printed on the islands and sold throughout Australia, but particularly up north. We had the opportunity to buy artworks that ranged from textiles to woven fibres to paintings but I was enthralled by the carvings. The totem poles that these communities carve are just gorgeous. There were a number at the museum, but some truly meaningful ones at the cemetery. We were not allowed to photograph those.

I fell in love with a carving of a cockatoo, which was sitting on the counter. It looked like someone had just purchased it, but actually it had just come back from Darwin. It was the only item that hadn’t sold at an exhibition for the Darwin Festival.

  

I couldn’t decide between the $77 small brolga carving or the huge cockatoo at the rather more expensive $330. I went with my head over my heart and chose the smaller one, figuring it would be easier to transport back to Melbourne. Just as the manager was about to wrap it, I sent some pics to Dunc, as I really wanted the larger one. Thankfully the entire family agreed and we went for the cockatoo instead. I found out afterwards that it was marked at $740 in Darwin, so we got a bit of a bargain too!

We had two more stops – one at the supermarket to buy lunch for those who needed it, and one at the church. The church altar has a wonderful mix of old and new religions and traditions and I’m glad we got to see it.

Then it was back on the ferry for our 2 hour return trip and the end of my ‘alone time’. I got to have a lovely chat with the owners of Zart Art (my version of Bunnings..) and was reassured that I had been on the right tour for me afterall. I also got to have a moment or two to myself for a short nap... and then we were back at the port of Darwin. The kids were literally jumping up and down with excitement to see me again, and it was lovely to be so missed.