[You can listen to a podcast of this blog post here]
The Dieri people traditionally made a very versatile tool out of tree bark (pityi) called a pirra, which is usually called ‘coolamon’ in English. These pirra (not to be confused with pira ‘moon’!) were of various sizes and used to carry water (ngapa), seeds (thandra) and vegetables (puka), tools (like wadna digging stick), and even babies (kupa). They could also be used as digging implements: widlhali kurdu pakuyi pirrali ‘the woman is digging a hole in the ground with a coolamon’.
Coolamons were made by cutting the bark off a living tree with stone axes and wedges, and then heating and shaping them over a fire. They could be decorated with ochre and/or incisions.
On our recent trip to Killalpaninna in Dieri country we were able to visit a pathara tree that a pirra had been cut out from — the Dieri traditional owners described how it had been made and used.
[You can listen to a podcast of this blog post here]
In Dieri country east of Lake Eyre there are very few stones or rocks. The landscape is a combination of sandhills, claypans, salt lakes, and gibber plains (comprising small red stones) and there are no stone outcrops or hills. Traditionally, rocks for grinding stones (in Diyari called marda, the smaller upper grinding stone is called marda kuparru), that were used to make flour from seeds, were traded in from other groups. Grinding stones came from quite some distance away, such as Yandruwandha country near Innamincka or Kuyani country near Finniss Springs. They were exchanged for local products and the ochre (called pukartu) collected by the Dieri at Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges and carried on foot for over 400 kilometers (for more details see Jones 2007).
Because there were no rocks, Dieri and other groups in central Australia moulded clay balls (called tyaputyapu) for use as heat retainers in cooking. They would prepare the clay balls by heating them in hot ashes to fire them and turn the clay hard. These were then used to cook in an earth oven — people would dig a hole in the ground (called kurdu) and put the balls in it, and then build a fire (thurru) on top. When the clay balls were hot, the hot coals would be removed, and then food would be placed in the pit on top of the clay balls for cooking. This was then covered with a mixture of hot coals and sand, and left for 30 minutes or more until the food was ready to remove from the earth oven and eat.
There is evidence in the archaeological record that this method of cooking was used by the Dieri and other groups for many thousands of years (see this 2009 report by Don Hitchcock about Lake Mungo in New South Wales). The explorer Edward John Eyre gives a first-hand report of seeing this method of cooking in 1845:
The native oven is made by digging a circular hole in the ground, of a size corresponding to the quantity of food to be cooked. It is then lined with stones in the bottom (or clay balls where stones are unavailable), and a strong fire made over them so as to heat them thoroughly, and dry the hole. As soon as the stones are judged to be sufficiently hot, the fire is removed, and a few of the stones taken, and put inside the animal to be roasted if it be a large one. A few leaves or a handful of grass, are then sprinkled over the stones in the bottom of the oven, on which the animal is deposited, generally whole, with hot stones… laid on top of it. It is covered with grass, or leaves, and then thickly coated over with earth, which effectually prevents the heat from escaping.
After outsiders arrived in Dieri country, this method of cooking seems to have been no longer practised. Aunty Rene does not remember her mother (ngandri) or grandmother Amanya Frieda (kadnhini ‘mother’s mother’) cooking in this way, so probably by the end of the 19th century it had gone out of use.
On our recent trip to Killalpaninna, Michelle Warren and her daughter (ngathani ‘child of a woman’, the child of a man is ngathamurra) Dakota and her niece Mikayla (also called ngathani in Diyari) decided to recreate the traditional cooking method. They made tyaputyapu clay balls (about the size of a person’s fist) out of the local soil mixed with water, and fired them in the ashes of our cooking hearth (in Dieri thurru manya). Two days later they made an earth oven, and prepared it in the same way Eyre describes with the tyaputyapu (photo by Pete Howard, (c) 2002 TDAC, used with permission).
They prepared some damper (made of flour and water), and put it on the tyaputyapu, covered it with ashes and sand, and left it to cook. Around 45 minutes later we all have a lovely feed of cooked damper (ngayani dampa thayirna parraya ‘we all (not including you) ate the damper’). It was really good: matya manyu marla!
So, a traditional cooking practice, which had gone out of use over 100 years ago, was revived on Dieri country by Dieri women.
References
Eyre, Edward John. 1845. Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia. London: T & W Boone.
Jones, Philip. 2007. Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and encounters on Australian frontiers. Adelaide: Wakefield Press.
[You can listen to a podcast of this blog post here]
An important source of food is Dieri country is yawa, usually translated as ‘wild onion’ or ‘bush onion’. The word is spelled in early records as “yowa” or “jaua” — Reuther mentions them 82 times in his dictionary. The scientific name is Cyperus bulbosus (see Johnston & Cleland 1943 page 157).
During our recent visit to Killalpaninna, Michelle Warren identified a patch of yawa growing under a patharra ‘coolibah tree’ near the entrance to Etadunna Station beside the Birdsville track, so we went there and she demonstrated how to dig for yawa and collect them to eat. In this picture (photo by Jan Scott, (c) 2022 TDAC, used with permission), Michelle shows the yawa plant. In Diyari we say: widlhali yawa wandrayi ‘the woman shows the yawa’. (click on the image to enlarge it)
This photo shows how to dig for yawa, Michelle gently moved her hand across the ground to dislodge the rhizomes and then picked them out of the soil (photo by Jan Scott, (c) TDAC, used with permission). In Diyari we say: widlhali mitha pakuyi yawaya ‘the woman digs the ground for yawa’.
The yawa come out of the ground with a dark-coloured skin (in Diyari paka), which must be peeled off to reveal the white seed inside that can then be either eaten raw (it has a nutty taste, akin to cashew or almond) or cooked in the ashes. These photos (photo by Pete Howard, (c) 2022 TDAC, used with permission) show Michelle holding the unpeeled and peeled yawa. In Diyari we say: widlhali yawa pardayi marali ‘the woman is holding yawa with her hands’.
It takes quite a lot of yawa to make a meal. Traditionally, women would grind the yawa to make a flour that was mixed with water and moulded into a bread-like cake that was baked in the ashes. Michelle and Reg, her father, reported that some time ago they collected a lot of yawa and put them in a used jam tin which they then heated on the fire until the yawa popped like popcorn.
Words in today’s post:
widlha ‘woman’ (we add the ending -li when it is the woman who is doing an action)
wandrayi ‘is showing’ (the root is wandra ‘to show’ and the ending -yi means ‘action now, is …ing’, called the ‘present tense’)
mitha ‘ground, earth, soil’
pakuyi ‘is digging’ (the root is paku ‘to dig’ and the ending -yi means ‘action now, is …ing’, called the ‘present tense’)
yawaya ‘for yawa’ (we add the ending -ya to show the goal or purpose, like we saw in the previous post kirlawirlpaya ‘to Killalpaninna’)
pardayi ‘is holding’ (the root is parda ‘to hold’ and the ending -yi means ‘action now, is …ing’, called the ‘present tense’)
marali ‘in the hand’ (we add the ending -li to show the means or instrument used in an action)
Reference
Johnston, T. Harvey and Cleland, John Burton. 1943. Native names and uses of plants in the north-eastern corner of South Australia. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 67, 149-173.
From 7th to 13th December 2022 a group of Dieri people and researchers (14 people in all) spent a week on Dieri country at Killalpaninna near Cooper Creek in the far north of South Australia. Killalpaninna (in Diyari kirlawirlpanhinha) was established as a Lutheran mission in 1866 and was closed by the Australian government in 1915. The main language of daily use on the mission was Diyari (the missionaries and workers learned to speak it, and it was used in the school and church, with various religious materials translated into Diyari).
Today, only ruins remain of the mission, but it continues to be an important historical anchor for many Dieri people, and a significant place that they like to visit.
Killalpaninna cemetary
This trip included members of four generations of the Warren and Kennedy families: Rene, Geoffrey, Reg, Nita, Marjorie, Michelle, Mikayla, and Dakota, together with Peter (linguist), Jan (anthropologist), Taryn (archaeologist), Zoe (botanist), Pete (videographer) and Daryl (community development, logisitics support).
We visited a number of sites around Killalpaninna and were able to observe and document food gathering, plant use, stone tool making, and cooking techniques, as well as record some archaeologically significant occupation sites. We did lots of interviews with Aunty Rene and others in English and Diyari, many of which were professionally filmed. Over the next few weeks we will post about some of our activities, so come back regularly and check out the new blog posts (click on the photos below to make them bigger).
north of Lake Killalpaninnainterview: Marjorie, Taryn and PeteMichelle, Uncle Geoffrey, Aunty Rene
The heading of today’s post means “We went to Killalpaninna” and consists of:
ngayani ‘we all (not including you)’
waparna ‘go’
parraya ‘action in the past week or two’ (for more details of its use see here)
Ngayana Diyari Yawarra Yathayilha 