Ceremonial Regalia

In the sacred totemic, initiation and historical ceremonies of Central and North Australia, the performers are elaborately decorated, and it is necessary to give a brief description of the regalia to enable the reader to obtain an adequate idea of the art of this region.

On the legs, arms, and body of the participant the designs are formed by the application of white feather-down along each side of the red or black lines or circles already traced out. A headdress of twigs and grass stalks bound with human-hair string and covered with feather-down in various patterns is formed round the coiled hair. Often the decoration of the body is made continuous with the headdress by gumming the feather-down over the head, neck, and upper part of the body.

The nurtunja and waninga are particularly sacred objects which represent the totem of the clan performing the ceremony or some article carried by the clan's culture hero. They are two varieties of the same thing, the nurtunja being confined to the northern and the waninga to the southern tribes of Central Australia. In its commonest form the nurtunja is made by binding a number of spears together with the hair of the men ; this pole is then covered with rings of white and reddened feather-down from top to bottom, a large tuft of eagle-hawk feathers is attached to the top, and from it a few tjurunga are suspended. The nurtunja may be in the form of a cross, or T, and a smaller one (straight, crescent, or melon-shaped), may be appended to it. Some are recognizable representations of natural species, but others show no resemblance to the totem. They are carried in the hands, set in the ground, or worn on the head.

The waninga consists of a vertical support with one or two transverse bars ; those with one cross-piece have twine made of human-hair, possum and bandicoot fur bound on so as to form a diamond-shaped figure in which the different colored materials may form a pattern. Those with two cross-pieces have vertical binding and form an oblong figure. White feather-down may be stuck on all over the binding. Waninga are widely distributed in Central Australia, Northern Territory and the Kimberleys.

Although a day or more may be spent in the preparation of the nurtunja and waninga, and in the personal decoration of the performers, the actual ceremony does not last long, in some instances only a few minutes. The nurtunja and waninga are dismantled, and the materials used are saved for future occasions. The combined effect of the strikingly contrasted coloring of red and white on the bodies of the performers and their paraphernalia make the Central Australian tribal ceremonies colorful spectacles of outstanding interest and the accounts of Sir Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen have made them famous.

The ceremonial tablets used in the rain-making rites of the Anula tribe of North Australia are also impressive. They are flat boards, two to three feet long, colored with a red ochre base, upon which white dots form a pattern of concentric circles and zigzags or, again, a sinuous snake-like figure in black may be shown. A tuft of eagle-hawk feathers is attached to the top of the board, and one is worn on the head of each of the actors taking part in a ceremony.