HERMANNSBURG POTTERS

This one is Paraltja, we eat them in the gum tree leaf. We get a big sheet or canvas or something put all the leaves down and then collect all the paralja that falls off. Put it in a plastic bag.

When we was a school kid, our mum and aunty and grandmother used to fill up a lot, a lot, a lot of sweet one, yes. We used to eat them, night time, when you come back from school. Paraltja there at home. When we get bigger, old, we go. This place name, sugar creek he got a lot of this one, paraltja, in the gum tree there. Lot of birds are there. Must have always been like that.

This two yellow and orange ones is bush tucker, we call them katjira (bush tomato), and this purple one that is kupaarta (bush plum). This one here grows on the mulga tree nice and sweet when they green. We call them ngaraaka (bush bean). We also got langua (bush banana), pmurlpa (quandong) and rraatninga (bush passionfruit).

This brown one is under the ground, we call Latjia. Arrkarnka hangs in a big gum tree and is sweet like a coconut. Urrarlpa from up in the hills and those green leaves are inmurta (mustard greens), same like what Hayley (Anita’s daughter)’s pot is about.

 This one is my grandmother’s story. We all stay in Ntaria alturla (westside of Hermannsburg). On the weekend, my grandmother and my mum, my aunty and my cousin and my sisters, we go for a walk down alturla urlpaiya (westside creek) to look for inmurta (mustard grass).

My grandmother told all us girls “you go get firewood” and we put it on the nice red sand.

Then my grandmother told us “go look for flat round rocks, maybe 5 or 8, flat one, little one, bring it to me.” And then she said “go get another grass, yaya.”

When that sand is hot, after the fire, we move it with the gum tree stick and then we put all the flat rocks on the hot sand. Then we put that green grass, we call it yaya, on top of the rock. Then we tie it up, little string, that marna inmurta. My grandmother showed us to do that.

Then we put the inmurta and put another grass, yaya, on top of the inmurta. Then we put that hot sand on the top and we make a little round one that sand, with that inmurta. Then my grandmother told us, “make foot prints, emu, on top of the red sand.” Then my grandmother say “we go for a swim and come back and see that emu print”

We come back from swimming to see that marna, my grandmother is standing and all the grandchildren, my cousins, sisters are there.

My grandmother says, “what do you see that emu footprint?”

“It’s cracked” we all say.

“Well then, its ready to eat that inmurta, just put little bit salt.”

We love our grandmother, she show us all different bushtucker. We always sleep with grandmother.