Bill Harney

The Lidi Grasshopper is one of Bill’s main Dreamings from his Yabulyawan clan estate. Grasshoppers emerge during the wet season and are intimately connected to the Lightning Dreaming that features prominently in his narratives. This carving refers directly to the paintings at Garnawala, a 32-metre-long gallery with one of the largest compositions in Wardaman country. This is the Lirrmingining People, the Grasshopper People. They are the Grasshopper people from the Dreaming time, what other people might call the Creation time. They’re all still around today helping, guiding, you know. In the Dreamtime they travel around in groups doing ceremony, dancing and weaving and they used the straw of the grass to make things. They taught people decoration for the body and really special one for the headdress. They’re all Wardaman but the way they wear the headdress, that tells you which different community [estate group], which totem, which people, but they’re all Wardaman. It’s is part of the Grasshopper Dreaming when the little crawling Grasshoppers were travelling in a group singing, dancing, naming the country, plants and soil and all the different pigment – white, red and yellow and black – naming decorations and costumes of straw and grass for body painting in country. This story belongs to Wardaman country, Wardaman people. (Bill Harney 2015)