North Eastern Queensland

The designs on the large oval shields, swords, cross-boomerangs, and paddles of the Cairns, Port Douglas and Mitchell River area of north-eastern Queensland are doubtless familiar to the reader. They consist of broad bands and masses of color painted in red, white and yellow, with black outlines defining the patterns, and offer a notable contrast to the incised line work of eastern Australia which has just been described. The patterns are almost invariably symmetrical, and the raised boss in the middle of the shield forms the central point around which the designs are built. Two initiated men paint the design on the shield or other object simultaneously, for this is the traditional method.

Some shields have variously colored lines radiating to all parts of the edge of the surface, or a neatly balanced set of red and yellow triangles with the remaining space in white. Miss Ursula McConnel lists the motifs for the Kung'ga : ndyi tribe as follows: Hafted ground-edge axes, the boomerang and the leaves of the tree from which it is made, the bark water-bag, leaves of a tree from which a cure for stinging nettles is obtained and of trees which bear edible fruits, match-box bean pods and seeds, tree grubs, various species of fish, the backbone of the salmon-fish, stars, comets and rainbows; and for the Mitchell River the mopoke, boomerang, and initiation scarification pattern.

The motifs thus consist of objects used in everyday life, food species featured in the totemic and historical myths associated with the spiritual ancestors, or natural phenomena of ritual importance. The totemic clan, with which each design is associated, performs historical ceremonies which portray the wanderings and activities of these culture-heroes or buleru. Many places in the clan or tribal territory are sacred because they are associated with the adventures of the buleru, who introduced and taught the tribe ways to hunt and prepare its food, founded its institutions, and performed the original sacred rites which the tribe has perpetuated. For instance, an ancestral hero once threw his boomerang a miraculous distance from a rock in the Kurabana territory, so this weapon is now buleru to certain members of the group, who use it as their main motif in the decoration of their weapons.

The traditional method of the Kung'ga : ndyi and Yidindyi tribes of north-east Queenland is for two men to work together on opposite ends of the shield. Lawyer-cane brushes are used to apply the pigments.

The turtle and kingfish are important food products and these are buleru to the members of their respective clans. This ritual relationship applies to all the other motifs. Miss McConnel concludes: "It was not only in the thunder and the rainbow, the sunset and the rain, that the buleru were revealed to the Kung'ga : ndyi, but also in those humbler things of nature which met his daily needs. The trees that furnished men with their weapons of defense and the implements that brought their food within their reach, no less than the fish and flesh that gave them strength to live and to hunt the foe ; the fruit of the trees and roots of the soil, that yielded the 'bread of life, as well as the dilly-bags in which the women carried them to and fro and the bark vessels in which they prepared and made their food good to eat; in all these things was manifested the beneficent care of the buleru. In them, therefore, the power of the buleru dwells . . . Thus it seems likely that the inspiration of the artists' choice of designs on the shields and other objects was originally drawn not merely from an intimacy with the common objects of every-day life but from a belief in the buleru who were responsible for the creation of these objects in the beginning and who impregnated them with their spirit, thus making them amenable to human needs".