Wondjina, a deity in Aboriginal mythology

Wondjina (also Wandjina, Wanjina; collectively Gulingi)

Region/Culture: Oceania — Kimberley region of north-west Western Australia; Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal peoples (the Wanjina Wunggurr cultural bloc)
Mythos: Aboriginal Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Supreme cloud and rain spirits who descended from the Milky Way during the Dreaming, shaped the land and the first people, and continue to govern monsoon weather, lightning, and the fertility of country.
Role in Mythos: Creator-ancestors and lawgivers of the Kimberley, the Wondjina established the landscape, the first humans, and the cultural law that binds them, and they remain the source of the seasonal rains.
Relation to Humans: The Wondjina are not distant; they are kin and judges, addressed directly through the repainting of their rock images by initiated custodians. They give rain, abundance, and law when honoured, and unleash flood, lightning, and cyclone when their sites or rules are neglected.

The wet season comes to the Kimberley with a sound before it is a sight. Far out over the Indian Ocean, thunder folds against itself and the air over the sandstone goes heavy and metallic, smelling of iron and bruised eucalyptus. Inside a rock shelter at the head of a gorge, an elder kneels with a brush of stripped bark and a paste of red ochre, water, and gum. The face above her is older than memory and bigger than a man. White eyes, ringed by long black lashes, watch the gorge with an attention that does not blink. No mouth. She lays the new paint over the old, and the figure brightens against the stone, and somewhere on the horizon the clouds begin to climb.

This is Wondjina. Not one being but many, a class of supreme creator spirits belonging to the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal peoples of the north-west Kimberley, where the freshwater rivers run down off the King Leopold Range to the saltwater coast. They live in the rock and in the cloud and in the Milky Way, and they are spoken of by name. Idjair, the father of all Wondjina, sits in the Milky Way itself. His son Wallungunder came down first and shaped the country, cut the gorges, hollowed the waterholes, and pressed the first humans out of soft mud at the edges of those pools. The head Wondjina, Walaganda, watched what had been made and then went back up among the stars.

The early people Wallungunder formed are called the Gyorn Gyorn in some traditions, the elongated, dancing ancestors whose elegant figures appear in the older rock galleries beneath the Wondjina overpaintings, sometimes by tens of thousands of years. The Wondjina came later in the rock, came down through the cloud, and brought with them the law: the songs, the marriage rules, the rights and responsibilities tying a person to a particular stretch of country. Where Wallungunder pressed his hands, water was. Where he stepped, a sacred site was. The Kimberley today is read by initiated people not as scenery but as the body of his act.

Their portraits are unmistakable. The faces are great pale ovals, sometimes painted on a sky-blue field, sometimes wreathed in coronas of red and yellow that fan out like crowns or like rain falling from a thunderhead. The eyes are large and black and surrounded by dark radiating lashes. There is no mouth. Two explanations are given, and both are taken seriously. The Wondjina are too powerful for speech, so the mouth would be redundant. Or, if they had mouths, the rain they bring would never stop, and the country would drown. Either way the silence is deliberate.

Around the head, blocks and bands of colour mark cloud, lightning, and falling water. Sometimes a smaller figure lies at the chest, the spirit of an unborn child waiting in the Wondjina’s body to be sent into a mother. The figures stand or float frontally, planted in the stone as if rising out of it, which is exactly what the stories say happened. When the work of creation was finished, the Wondjina pressed themselves into the rock walls and became the paintings. They did not die. They are still there, looking outward, and the paint is their living skin.

Because of that, the images are not relics. Each year, or each decade, custodians return to a Wondjina site, clean the surface, and repaint the figure in fresh ochre and charcoal and white pipe-clay, often before the wet. The act renews the spirit’s presence and ensures the rains. To leave a Wondjina to fade is to weaken the country. To deface or paint one without authority is a serious wrong, one that the spirit is held to answer in person, with weather. There are accounts within living memory of catastrophic storms read back to specific transgressions at specific sites.

The myth has a darker register too. The Wondjina punish. Stories tell of an early people who broke the law, fell into violence and incest, and were drowned in a great flood the Wondjina sent down. Cyclones, lightning strikes that kill, drownings in flooded creeks — all of these are within their gift, and all of them function as moral instruction. The same hand that fills the river fills it past the banks.

Their powers follow from what they are. They open and close the wet. They lay down lightning. They place children in wombs and souls into newborns. They hold the law and remember every breach. The white halo around the head is rain on the way. The line down the centre of the chest is the spine of country itself.

Their limits, where they exist, are quieter and entirely cultural. A Wondjina depends on relationship. An unrepainted figure dims; an abandoned site loses its rain; a custodial line broken by colonisation, removal, or loss of language weakens the channel through which the spirit acts. They are not killed and they cannot be bargained with. They can only be neglected. That is the one thing they will not survive well, and it is the one thing they ask people not to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Wondjina?

A Wondjina is a supreme creator and rain spirit of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal peoples of the Kimberley in north-west Australia. The Wondjina descended from the Milky Way during the Dreaming, shaped the land and the first humans, and continue to control the monsoon, lightning, and the fertility of country.

Why do Wondjina figures have no mouth?

The Wondjina are painted without mouths, and two traditional explanations are given. The first is that they are too powerful to need speech. The second is that if a Wondjina had a mouth, the rain it brings would never stop and the country would be drowned.

Where are Wondjina paintings found?

Wondjina paintings are found in rock shelters across the Kimberley region of Western Australia, on the country of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal peoples. The oldest surviving Wondjina images have been dated to around 4,000 years and are often painted over much older Gyorn Gyorn (Gwion Gwion) figures in the same galleries.

Who is Wallungunder?

Wallungunder is the first son of Idjair, the father of all Wondjina who lives in the Milky Way. Wallungunder came down to the Kimberley at the beginning of the Dreaming, cut the rivers and gorges, hollowed out the waterholes, and shaped the first people from mud at the edges of those pools.

What happens if a Wondjina painting is damaged or neglected?

A Wondjina painting is not an artwork in the European sense; it is the living presence of the spirit in the rock. To deface a Wondjina, or to allow its image to fade without authorised repainting, is held to weaken the country and to invite retributive weather such as cyclones, floods, and lethal lightning, and serious storms in the Kimberley have been read back to specific breaches at specific sites.