In Her Own Words - Megan Lyons
Megan Lyons is an Aboriginal artist from the APY Lands in the far north-west of South Australia. Her paintings carry stories from her grandfather's and grandmother's Country, near Nyapari. We sat down with Megan at our Adelaide gallery and she walked us through two of the stories her family has held for generations: Piltati, and Goanna Man.
On Country
Both stories sit in Country near Nyapari, in the APY Lands. Megan's grandfather is the traditional owner of the land where the first story takes place. His Country has a cave that the women used as a birthing place when there were no hospitals. You need special permissions to go in. Beyond that cave is her grandmother's homeland - her grandmother was Nganyitja Lyons.
Around the cave there are hillsides. The women of the family would gather behind those hillsides for ceremony, singing and dancing together.
On Piltati
The story follows two brothers and two sisters. They were coupled, husband and wife. When the women went out hunting, the men would leave on their own.
While the women were alone, the men would turn into different animals to watch over them. Most often, they were kangaroos. The women noticed there were always two big kangaroos nearby, and they went home to tell their husbands. But when they got back to camp, the husbands were already there. The women found this strange. The men had gone off on their own, and yet there they were.
The older brother said it was not safe to be certain animals. There was hunting, and there were spirits to think about. The younger brother wanted to be a sky animal, an eagle. But the spirits in the sky were bigger and dangerous.
So the brothers became water snakes instead. They dug down into the ground, into a big water place called Pilati, and that is what made the river.
The women followed the water. Eventually the water ran out, and they came to rockholes. They were digging in the rockholes with their bowls and digging sticks, looking for food, when they found the snakes. One of the women stabbed the younger brother in the head by mistake. She did not know it was him.
On Goanna Man
This story is set beyond the cave, in her grandmother's homeland.
Goanna Man had a tail, and he looked like a goanna. He was from the Northern Territory, living in the bush with his wife. While he was travelling, he smelled food and heard a song carried on the air, and he came close to a village.
He tried to stand up like a man, to deceive the people there. He told the aunties he was their family. He told the brothers he was their brother. The people were not sure about him, but they let him stay anyway, believing him.
What he was really after was the food he could smell, food made on the grinding stones. Things like mashed potatoes. Several women, six or seven, gave him food they had ground. None of it tasted any good. Then an older woman gave him food ground from the big grinding stone. That one tasted right, and he had a very good feed.
He stayed at camp that night. The next morning the men were going hunting and asked him to come along. He stabbed his own foot on purpose so he could say he was injured and stay behind. The men went hunting. The women took the children elsewhere.
He looked around to see if anyone was there. No one. So he went into the kitchen area, found the big grinding stone and stole it. He had to work out how to hide it, so he tucked it under the end of his tail.
When the people came back in the evening they looked for the grinding stone, and realised the Goanna Man had taken it. He had already left to go home. As he travelled he sang, and goanna spirits came up and swept his tracks away, leaving lots of small goanna tracks behind instead.
He wanted to get back to the Northern Territory, back to his wife with the grinding stone. But he went a different way home, near the Western Australian border. Despite all his deception, the people still found him. He was in a big cave near WA. They killed him there for the stone. Some of the people who went into that cave also died, mysteriously. There may have been bad spirits in there.
About Megan Lyons
Megan Lyons is an Aboriginal artist from the APY Lands in the far north-west of South Australia. Her work carries Tjukurpa from her grandfather's and grandmother's Country near Nyapari, including the Piltati and Goanna Man stories her family has held for generations. Her grandmother was Nganyitja Lyons, and the Country Megan paints holds caves, rockholes and hillsides that have been central to her family's ceremony and storytelling.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Australian Aboriginal Art Association. Every painting comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.