This painting of the Wollombi Waterhen (Purple swamphen porphyrio porphyrio) is by Wollombi artist Wayne Krause (Nginti) who has generously donated it to the Little Yengo Gallery where it will hang permanently to tell the Wollombi story.

“The story is that we’ve got all the circles. The outside circle is the lore. We are all encompassed by the lore. Every circle represents a part of the lore, it all has a story.

We’ve got the emu (female) and the kangaroo (male). They keep the balance of both sides. They keep the balance of the lore and they go along with the lore the same way. 

They have differing thoughts on the way it goes, but they go along in the same direction, complementing each other.

Then we go down the forearm of the two animals, where we have two more animals, the goanna and the echidna. Together with the emu and the kangaroo, they are the four animals that made the landscape and gave us the other animals. 

The echidna is Mount Yengo (female). Towards Broke there is a mountain which is the goanna (male).

The other circles are meeting places and that’s what the waterhen is all about. 

When we come to Wollombi, we’ll go and stay in one place where everyone meets and learns the stories before going up to Mt. Yengo to do ceremony. Wollombi was, and still is, a big meeting place.

The other circles have two waterhens, one is from a rock carving site. That is about the responsibility of keeping all together. 

Each line represents a community. The brush turkeys are the same. We all share the responsibility of looking after them.

We also have Biaami’s footprint, which means that there is law to be learnt, so that everyone is doing the right thing. 

This is something that would have been spoken of in Wollombi when the mob all got together, knowing they are doing the right thing in community. That is basically the story.

The spear and the shield, with the kangaroo mean that you will be doing the right thing, because the spear is a form of punishment if you do not. 

The emu and kangaroo footprints are going in the same direction, walking the same path, going the same way.

The spirits are around the male and female on both sides, still within the lore. It means there’s another form in the way we are as male or female in the spirits, human form and human spirits which are looking down at the lore, but are also part of it.

Fish are there too. Fish were a major food source throughout country and creek systems, the systems you go through. The lines could also be a creek system or division of different mobs’ country. It depends which way you see it. The criss-cross lines are fishing nets.

Everyone has a belief in some form, which encompasses everything we do. Our morals, the way we live life, good and bad. All is included, all our beliefs. 

It doesn't matter who you are. Cultural belief is that we are all enveloped within the lore. No one is outside it, no matter who you are.”