Old Camp (Lisa Mpetyan Cook)

Old Camp existed before us, our grandparents used to live there. There were no cars, no houses, we walked everywhere from place to place, searching for food and water holes. The kids played on the creek bed with the river red gums (per). The mothers waited for their partners to return from hunting. The men went hunting, they made hunting tools together, from Mulga trees. They used to sleep in humpies with wind breaks near the fire on creek beds. They built up the fire throughout the night during cold nights because they had no blankets, just grass and animal furs for their beds. They used their coolamons made from bean trees (inernt) for carrying water and bush tucker. They searched for food from trees, roots, digging in the dirt for witchetty grubs (anyematy) and goannas (arlewatyerr). They collected berries from trees, bush bananas (parl), sugarbags (rltwamp), kangaroos (aherr), turkeys (artew), emus (ankerr), perentie (tywenp), echidnas (inarleng). My dad and mum used to tell us these stories about their parents. They had no sugar and tea bags, no flour, just water and bush foods. No tobacco, they used to collect pituri (rnpwernp/arwenp), using it with ash from the trees.

Medium: Acrylic on metal

Artwork Size: 47 x 35cm

Catalogue No: 204-26