'Sand Goanna Hunting' by Uncle Colin Jones

"This painting tells the story of the Sand Goanna. When the Sand Goanna lays its eggs it digs a hole in the sand to a certain depth and the heat of the sun germinates the eggs and helps them to hatch. The Goannas and their eggs were a very important food for our people. It was normally Women’s business to track the Goanna and find where its living and where to find its eggs.

You can see in the artwork, the squiggly black tail lines with the footprints either side, these are the tracks of the Sand Goanna as it moves along, so our people know to track and hunt it.

The big circles represent the life-force of the land and the colours of the earth indicate that this in the Red Centre. You can also see little salt pans going up and the little gibbers along the dry creek beds.

You can also see the little white circles with the eggs in the centre. Around those circles you can see the ‘U’ shapes; they represent people. In our culture, we never painted portraits, we painted symbols. When you sit on the earth - the mother, on your knees, on your backside and then get up to walk away, that is the shape you, the human leaves behind and no animals can make that shape. You may ask, is it a man or a woman? The art documents, because it is a written language in our culture. So beside the ‘U’ shapes you can see little oval bowls we call coolomon or pitchi and we have a digging stick. Those two implements are purely the rights of women so you know that there are three women sitting and digging for the eggs.

There are two big hands in the painting; these are my wife’s hands and she’s an older lady and the older women have the responsibility to teach the next generation of young women growing up the hunting and gathering. So her hands are there and then you have the women sitting in a circle digging for the eggs and the older people are explaining to the young ones how to track, where to dig and how to look for the eggs.

So the painting tells the story of collecting the eggs of the Sand Goanna and tracking the Sand Goanna."