Purrukuparli and the Bush Stone Curlew

The NGV Collection has 19 works that depict the story of Purrukuparli – the story of how death came to the Tiwi Islands. This tale and her experience of the sound of the curlew prompted Dorothy Bennett to write the following post.

In the Moon legend of Bathurst Island Tiwi people, Purukuparli, the first man on Earth, lives happily in a timeless land with his wife Waiei (also known as Bima) and their infant son Djinani. But one day his brother, Tapara, takes advantage of his absence whilst hunting, to come down from where he lives with their mother the Moon to woo Purukuparli’s wife. She goes off with him and they make love all day, while the child is left alone. When Purukuparli returns he finds the baby dead; he has been left in the hot sun all afternoon. He mourns his death and calls for his wife, but Tapara prevents her from answering.

Then Purukuparli  finds Tapara, who offers, through their mother the Moon, to bring the child back to life, but only at the full moon. The father refuses and declares that as his son is dead everyone must die, and none must return. Tapara is defeated in the ensuing fight and disappears to the sky, and becomes the Moon, where his scars may still be seen as the craters on the moon. Purukuparli is grief-stricken and walks backwards into the sea with his son. Waiei, mourning and bewailing the loss of her son, is transformed into a curlew, and her cry can be heard at night as she wanders across the land seeking her child.

This is really a creation myth about how Death comes to man; but it’s also a dramatic and some might say entirely plausible explanation of the terribly haunting and mournful cry of the curlew.

On Magnetic Island there are many curlew, and these ones are the Bush Stone Curlew, one of the two main species found in Australia:  the other is the Beach Stone Curlew, which can be found on Groote Eylandt, among other places. Apparently these are now an endangered species and in much smaller numbers than previously, but the evening noise must have been deafening in earlier times, if our experience is anything to go by. We heard them on a number of nights, and on one night in particular, it seemed as though there were dozens of birds fighting overhead for what felt like hours, but I suppose would have been only five or ten minutes at a time. The cries are exactly like a child crying or screaming, or even sometimes a cat screeching, and it comes and goes and leads up into a crescendo of noise. The notion that it might be a mother wailing for her lost child doesn’t seem at all implausible in these circumstances.

We encountered curlews, the first time we went to Magnetic Island, and found them a bit spooky, because they are so completely silent on the ground, and they are perfectly camouflaged in the undergrowth and just suddenly appear in front of you, or at your side in an outdoor restaurant, which can be a bit discombobulating, especially if you haven’t seen one before. They are funny looking creatures, sometimes about a foot or so tall, with a long beak, quite a long skinny neck, an oval-shaped body and terribly thin legs, (but thick knees) ending in a wading birds’ awkward three-toed foot.

They get about very slowly, poking their necks forward like old women, in a jerky movement, but seemingly not afraid of humans, probably because of the tourist trade there and the possibility of morsels of food dropping near them. They seem to eat just about anything and I read that they can eat small crustaceans, grasshoppers, small reptiles, seeds and small fruits, among other things, but they don’t scratch for food, only eating what’s on the surface.

This year, we almost befriended a pair, who came most nights to the grassy patch in front of our outdoor terrace, where they could hide quite easily under some shrubs when they didn’t want to be seen. Around dusk they would peer out and stare sideways at us. I marvelled at how still they could stand for such long periods of time, quite close to us, often on one leg only, or with one foot tucked under, as we sat with our evening drinks; and I managed to count a dozen different patterns in their plumage, from dots and dashes on their bosoms and undersides, to a single white row of small feathers along the side, to varied patterns of black, grey and white, but mainly black, on the feathers at their backs, to an intricate stripe- almost a diamond pattern- on the tail-feathers, which looked exactly like an aboriginal shield design. They did a good eyeliner too, all around their eyes in black. In the end I found them quite beautiful and appealing.  

They can live for up to 30 years, usually mate for life, and protect their young by camouflaging behaviour, and they don’t have many natural predators except for goannas or larger snakes, though younger ones can be picked off by kookaburras and other carnivores. They do fight, not only at night, as when we heard them, but to protect their territory or their young. These days many fall foul of cars and trucks on the roads, and that contributes to their declining numbers too.

Although technically a wader, they are most often seen on the land, and only fly when frightened or to get better ground or something like that. Their shy but watchful behaviour we began to find interesting, and we found ourselves talking to them as they appeared for their evening  ‘passeggiata’. But somehow the story of Waiei always reminded me that they might be sad creatures, really, looking for but never finding a lost being.

If Dorothy’s thoughts on Bush Stone Curlew’s has sparked your interest, you might want to follow up with the comprehensive publication from the Nature Conservation Working Group: https://www.wirraminna.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Learning-About-Bush-Stone-curlews-FINAL.pdf.

If you are interested in learning more about Tiwi Island art, the essay by James Bennett in the NGV Art Journal no. 33, June 2014 titled ‘Narrative and decoration in Tiwi painting: Tiwi representations of the Purukuparli story’ is extremely interesting: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/narrative-and-decoration-in-tiwi-painting-tiwi-representations-of-the-purukuparli-story/