Fig. 50. Symbolic pictograph of caterpillar, Tjuringa, Arunndta tribe.
A design, fairly common in the north of Western Australia, consists of two wavy lines which are parallel, in the inverted or reflected sense, and joined at one end. The true significance of this pattern does not become evident until one hides from view all but three of the “waves,” say that portion lying to the right of the dotted line in the accompanying sketch. When this is done, the form of a “flying fox” is immediately recognized ([Fig. 45]).
In central, northern, and eastern Australia, a pattern frequently met with on boomerangs, fighting sticks, and message sticks, consists of strings of lenticles longitudinally striped and generally associated with kangaroo tracks. This device is analogous to the one standing for the walking of a man, viz. the zig-zag, in so far as it stands for the hopping of a kangaroo. Here and there one finds the pattern “finished off” at one end with the head of a kangaroo ([Fig. 46]).
A duel or tribal fight of any description is graphically recorded by two crossed boomerangs, but the conventional derivative of this design is simply supplied by two crossed lines ([Fig. 47]).
Time is chronicled by two phases of the moon; a crescent standing for new, and a circle for full moon.
Fig. 51. Symbolic drawing of “native-pear totem,” Arunndta tribe.
The substance, origin, home, or habitat of any creature figuring in a drawing or gravure is particularized by the addition of a circle-within-circle design. For instance, in the tjuringa of the witchedy grub shown in [Fig. 48], the parallel, straight lines, enclosed within a “U,” at the left-hand side, represent the grub, the three concentric circle groups in the centre are the gum trees in which it lives, the “U within U” pattern at the right is an ancestor whose “totem” was the witchedy grub, while the parallel lines at the extreme right of the tjuringa are markings on the grub which have been adopted by the man who owns the tjuringa, in the form of cicatrices, he cuts on his chest.
The “U within U” pattern is frequently met with engraved upon tjuringas, and in most cases it conventionally conveys the idea of a “sitting” person or animal. We have already noted something similar in the peculiar concentric iron stains of Heavitree Gap ([page 342]), but in the following three tjuringa drawings of the Arunndta additional illustrations are given.