Goanna Love Story – Debra Nangala McDonald

The Inspiration Behind the Artwork

Debra Nangala McDonald was born at Warumpi (Papunya), a remote community some 240km west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Debra’s maternal grandfather is Shorty Lungkata Tjungurayyi (c.1920–1987), an esteemed artist and one of the founding members of Papunya Tula Artists.

Debra inherited the Goanna Love Story Dreaming story from her grandfather, and like him, paints stories that are significant to the country surrounding Karrkurutinyja (Lake Macdonald) and the community of Walungurru (Kintore), straddling the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Goannas have a prominent place in the culture of Indigenous Australians. Representations of goannas are common in Aboriginal artwork as a symbolic spiritual motif. Not only are they a valued bush tucker, but their significance extends to include totemic relationships and anthropomorphic representations in Dreaming stories.

Goannas are also prized for their medicinal value, as Aboriginal people traditionally use goanna oil as an important bush medicine, used to treat muscular pains as well as conditions such as arthritis.

Each painting is unique, but the symbolism in the artwork can be explained in general terms. The small concentric circle is the hole in the sandbank where the goanna lives. The large circle depicts the contours of the tali (sandhills) surrounding the goanna’s hole. The dotting outside these circles is the sand and grass along the sandhill place.

The elongated designs on either side represent the tracks of the goanna as he searches the sandhills to find a wife. This design connects to the sacred Tingari Dreaming Cycle of the Western Desert, and relates to the Goanna Spirit beings of the Dreaming journeys as they travelled across vast distances of desert country. This story is connected to a sacred place to the west of the Sandy Blight Junction in Western Australia.

This important Shorty Lungkata design is documented on p.266 of Geoffrey & James Bardon’s book Papunya: A Place Made After the Story. The Beginning of the Western Desert Painting Movement.