By the Stars, Wind & Ocean Currents. Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Bulthirrirri Wunungmurra & Nawurapu Wunungmurra — 30 November to 8 February 2020

Yolngu invited the Makassan people to their camp and explained to them who they were. Makassans explained who they were and why they came. In their heart they were Yolngu people. The Makassan taught the Yolngu their song and traditions and the Yolngu taught the Makassan their culture and law and tradition. – Dhuwarrwarr Marika, artist statement, Telstra National Indigenous and Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, 2019

By the Stars, Wind & Ocean Currents garnered the notion of reciprocity inherent in the term ‘exchange’ or trade between the monsoon coast of northern Australia and the Indonesian archipelago. The ‘open archipelago’ has passed from living memory but extended families, grave sites, rock art and ceremonies survive.The exhibition presented powerful bark paintings, larrakitj, prints and works on paper, stemming from multiple generations. Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Nawurapu Wunungmurra and Nawurapu’s granddaughter Bulthirrirri Wunungmurra (in her debut exhibition), together drew upon a fascinating counter-history: the relationship between Makassan and Yolngu people.

This was the first in a series of exhibitions by contemporary artist networks in the region, presenting a complex reality involving many world civilisations— one that defies the singular and incorrect ‘discovered by Captain Cook’ mythology of Australia.

To some, including academic Regina Gantner, ‘The telling of the Makassan stories has become an act of resistance. It refuses to allow a government decision to sever the link to Makassar, Timor and Sama Bajo places’. Scholars working in anthropology and archaeology, and curators of select museum and permanent exhibits, have kept the flame burning. The standout so far is acknowledged as historian Peter Spillett’s epic counterpoint to the 1988 Bicentennial of British annexation: a reconstructed prahu(1) titled Hati Marege/ Heart of Arnhem Land, built for a voyage from Makassar to make landfall at Galiwin’ku and Yirrkala. This vessel now sits in the Maritime Museum: Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Spillett additionally worked with the Yolngu peoples to re-connect family lines across the archipelago.

In 1947, senior ceremonial leaders at Yirrkala produced hundreds of vibrant crayon drawings compiled by anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt, which now reside at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology.(2) Dhuwarrwarr Marika draws inspiration from her father Mawalan Marika’s original work entitled Makassan Swords and Long Knives (1947).(3) The swords can be seen as a symbol of the relationship that Yolngu people shared with the seafaring Makassans. In the 1960s, Mawalan Marika was also a key informant for Campbell Macknight, whose doctoral research on the trepangers is published as The Voyage to Marege: Macassan trepangers in northern Australia.(4) In this classic work Macknight presents ‘Australia’s first modern industry’.

Yolngu oral, dance and visual traditions are emphatically alive today. In 2015, Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre initiated an ongoing Makassan/Yolngu history exchange project. Artist and senior law man Nawurapu Wunungmurra travelled to Makassar in 2015 and his batik—a collaboration with batik artisans from Pekalongan in Central Java—was presented to the Textile Museum in Jakarta in 2017. Wunungmurra’s bark paintings and larrakitj show the distinctive glyph-like monsoon clouds, winds and ocean currents of the complex monsoon system that powered the trade. These dynamic sea passages were sailed by expert captains on prahu with multi-cultural crews—Makassarese, Butonese, Bugis, Bajau, Madurese and ‘Koepangers’ from Dutch Timor. They crossed the deep channels of the archipelago via Timor, to the northern Australian coastline, guided by the stars or a small compass.

Strategically located between western and eastern Indonesia, Makassar was the centre of Gowa Sultanate, which adopted Islam in 1605, with its sword belts and talismanic discs. The sultanate was then conquered by the Portuguese. There is much that is alive and open to interpretation about the trade. Dates differ, with some researchers citing trade beginnings through the records of conquest by the Dutch East India Company (c. 1669). Others citing the navigators Matthew Flinders or Nicholas Baudin (1803). Dhuwarrwarr Marika’s bark work Milnurr (2019), depicts a ‘Malay Road’ as described by Flinders.

At the onset of the north-west winds that usually arrive in December, a fleet of 50 or more prahu annually left Makassar in South Sulawesi. After ten or so days they would make landfall on Marege—the coast from Melville Island to Arnhem Land—and venture down into Yanyuwa Country in the Gulf of Carpentaria, a distance of over 1000 kms. Alternatively they would turn towards Kayu Jawa (the Kimberley). All are lands and waters occupied by Aboriginal nations. The two groups entered into a series of reciprocal negotiations for the right to spend four to five months collecting and processing trepang.(5) Local communities were thus linked to an international trading network. At the conclusion of their stay, trepang fishers returned home again via Timor with the south-east trade winds.

Federation cut 20th century Australia off from the world with taxes, charges and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which formed the basis of the White Australia Policy and an aggressive nation state. Makassan trepangers were outlawed at the urging of missionary groups and through greed to establish a second Singapore. The last voyage took place during the 1906–07 wet season, when people who had sailed the waters for generations were summarily evicted.

Academic Marcia Langton notes, ‘The trade was absorbed as innovations in philosophy and practice in the performing and visual arts.(6) Material items traded included dugout canoes, woven fibre sails, steel knives and other metals, hooks, fishing lines and beads as well as tobacco, cards, money and alcohol. Returning prahu added pearl, tortoise shell and artefacts to their valuable cargo of smoked trepang. Woven cloth— another traded item—remains important in Yolngu and Tiwi welcoming and mortuary ceremonies. Makassan pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast, not just between Makassan and Aboriginal people, but also between different Aboriginal groups—in Yolngu about 500 words are still in use. Makassan and Malay influences live on today in language, ceremonies, songs, dances, artworks and museum objects.

Along the shore the Makassans left tamarind trees and lines of stone to enable cooking pots to boil, smoke and cure the flesh of the trepang, which was used as a delicacy in soups and considered by the Chinese an aphrodisiac. Property rights also developed in some areas as a way of determining the right to capture trepang. Ancestral coastal estates extend well out into the sea and include the near-shore, making trade history relevant to mounting legal arguments about native title. In 2008, the High Court made the Blue Mud Bay decision, granting traditional Yolngu owners exclusive native title rights to the inter-tidal zone. First Nations people once again control access to the waters of a major fishery. Indigenous art and exhibitions, such as Saltwater (1999) and Dalkiri: Standing On Their Names (2010), have helped non-Indigenous people to understand how the law codifies and maps obligations to the land, sea and sky.

The year 2020 called us to survey the 250th anniversary of the landing of James Cook and crew at Botany Bay. The significance of the Hati Marege/Heart of Arnhem Land and the prahu’s subversive overturning of the foundational narrative of Captain Cook, the Endeavour and the unilateral British land claim has not been lost: from Johnny Bulunbulun and Maningrida dancers performing in Makassar (1993) to the ongoing Makassar–Yirrkala Artist Exchange begun by Nawurapu Wunungmurra in 2015, northern Australia invites a poly-cultural future.

By the Stars, Wind & Ocean Currents provoked us to look to all the seafaring comings and goings, from the north through the straits between the islands of the archipelago, by representatives of all world civilisations. In a political region of closed borders and the parlous state of minorities, can art continue to open up new routes for dialogue? 

Footnotes
1. A type of sailing boat originating from Malaysia and Indonesia that may be sailed with either end forward, typically having a large triangular sail and an outrigger.
2. Located at the University of Western Australia.
3. Featured in the exhibition catalogue Yirrkala Drawings (AGNSW, 2013).
4. C C Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan trepangers in northern Australia, 1976, Melbourne University Press.
5. Trepang is a common name for species of the holothuroidea (sea cucumber) class of animals.
6. Marcia Langton, Trepang: China and the story of Macassan–Aboriginal trade. Exhibition cata- logue, Museum Victoria, 2011.

Installation. Back wall: Bark paintings and Larrakitj by Nawurapu Wunungmurra. Foreground: Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Milnurr, 2019, natural pigments on bark, 77 x 62 cm.

Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Milnurr, 2019. Natural pigments on bark, 77 x 62 cm.

Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Makassan Prahu, 2016. Etching and aquatint, 40 x 40 cm (11-16-29/30).

Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Yalanbara, 2019. Natural pigments on bark, 138 x 72 cm (4523-19)

L: Bulthirrirri Wunungmurra, Wunupini, 2019, 110 x 47 cm (5808-19). R: Bulthirrirri Wunungmurra, Wunupini, 2019, 127 x 37 cm (4120-19). Natural pigments on stringybark.

Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Swords/Serpents/Lightning, 2019. Natural pigments on bark, 162 X 75 cm (3823-19).

Barayuwa Mununggurr and Whaiora Tukaki visit By the Stars, Wind and Ocean Currents. Work details Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Macassan Swords (back) and Gan’kurr, Nonda, Nukaliya (Crabs, shells and trepang), 2019.

Barayuwa Mununggurr and Whaiora Tukaki at By the Stars, Wind and Ocean Currents informing Belle Blau and Freÿa Black more about works by his late uncle Nawurapu Wunungmurra.

Makassan prahus sailed “Malay Roads” before the European “discovery” of Australia. At the onset of the northwest winds (December) fleets left Makassar in South Sulawesi and made landfall on Marege to reach trepang harvest sites the along the northern Australian coastline. By 1650 this coast was reliably charted and prahus with multi-cultural crews (Makassarese, Butonese, Bugis, Bajau, Madurese and ‘Koepangers’ from Timor) sailed its length — all lands and waters owned and occupied by Aboriginal nations. This ABC TV news footage honours the cultural and economic exchange. 3 February 2020.