Tjayanka Woods

This is a popular dreamtime story of seven ladies being chased through the desert by one man. Eventually they rise up into the sky and form the Pleiades, a group of seven stars seen in the southern skies. There are many variations of this story. Tjanyanka paints the Tjurkurpa-creation stories and tracks she walked as a young girl when she was still living a nomadic lifestyle. She uses a brush to create lines which represent paths of travel of the tjuritja beings with the circular shapes representing the sacred sites or the tjuritja beings themselves. She then uses a punu-stick to paint lines of coloured dots representing the rich and beautiful country for which she is responsible.