Nyinkka Nyunyu is an Aboriginal sacred site in
Warumungu country.
By chance the town of Tennant Creek grew up around
the home of the spiky tailed goanna, the Nyinkka,
a powerful Wirnkarra or ancestral being.

Right beside the Stuart Highway as it passes through Tennant Creek are the rocks which are home to the Nyinkka.
The Nyinkka Nyunyu Centre is a Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation community development project on behalf of the principal custodians of the site and the Aboriginal community of Tennant Creek and the Barkly region. It will be an archive centre for Aboriginal people where all visitors will be welcome.
Stage 1, under construction, is a café and arid zone garden with two traditional dance rings, for men and women's performances.
The landscaping shows different habitats of the Barkly region: spinifex and snappy gum country through which the Nyinkka travelled, a river feature marked by river red gums, and watercourse country around the men's dance area.
The gardens will feature bush tucker and medicinal plants. All signs including plant identification will be in Warumungu and English. Interpretive material will explain the sacred site and different landscaping features. A story path of sound poles will delight the visitor with sounds of birds and animals from different habitats, children laughing and talking in Warumungu, and other sounds which might be heard around any Warumungu campsite.
A small shop is to be set up next to the café, to showcase the work of local artists and direct visitors to Aboriginal galleries and workshops in town.
This will be an active meeting place for local Aboriginal people but visitors are also welcome. Regional tourism information, toilets and cold water will be available.
Stage 2 is a major building housing a gallery, interpretive display and shop.
The gallery will show occasional or long term exhibitions, including material on loan from the South Australia Museum and Museum Victoria. It will have museum standard lighting and temperature and humidity controls.
The second major building will also contain administration, a resource area for further research, meeting room and staff kitchen and toilet facilities.
The fixed interpretive display housed next to the gallery will be 'big picture' visual statements about key Warumungu concepts, social system and history including:
o People - family, appropriate behaviour
o Wirnkarra - law, religion
o Land, land ownership, the Warumungu land claim
o Time - the Wumpurrani concept of time, and a chronological depiction of time since the arrival of Papulanji (whitefellers) including mining and pastoral themes
o Language - key words with interactive audio aids to pronunciation, and a guide to Warumungu sign language
o Food including plants and bush tucker, continuing the theme from the garden
o Fire / heat/ wood
o Water
o Dance
o Art
o Fighting - kili, the Warumungu perspective on Attack Creek, Nuship Warramunga, dispute resolution
o Sport
o Aboriginal nations represented in Tennant Creek and Regional Aboriginal organisations.
The Barkly and its beginnings
Tennant Creek grew up as a frontier mining town and prospered in the boom years of copper and gold from the 1930's to the 1960's when at least six mines were working at a time. Mining declined until the last gold mine operated by Posgold of the Normandy Poseidon group closed in September 1999.
There are some prominent pastoral stations in the Barkly region but their reliance on the town is limited. There has been a major relocation of government workers over the past three years and the town suffers a depressed regional economy.
Reviving the economy
Despite the depressed regional economy the town remains optimistic. Economic strategies in the Year 2000 Barkly Blueprint are based on mining exploration, tourism, construction of the Alice Springs to Darwin Railway, increasing cattle production and potential commercial horticultural production.
Tourism opportunity
Tourism in Tennant Creek is currently based on the history of the mining industry and the Overland Telegraph. Nyinkka Nyunyu offers an opportunity to broaden the local industry into Aboriginal cultural tourism and meet visitor expectations identified by Australian Tourism Commission research.1
The Centre will meet an expressed desire of tourists to interact with Aboriginal people, and without leaving the Stuart Highway. It will work with other regional attractions to bring visitors to the area and encourage them to stay longer, the central aim of the Regional Tourist Association's strategic planning.
Aboriginal residents
Aboriginal people make up half of the population of Tennant Creek. The town is in Warumungu country, and there are eleven other Aboriginal nations represented there. The non-Aboriginal population is a cosmopolitan group of Australian, several European and Asian nations.
Tennant Creek may be described as two communities occupying the same space. While the division is not strictly along racial lines, there is essentially a traditional Aboriginal community and a non-Aboriginal community which has the expectations of living in an 'ordinary' Australian rural town. The two sets of expectations do not always coincide.
Tennant Creek is really at the cutting edge of communities learning to live together.2
This community has evolved from a series of forced relocations of various groups, notably the pastoral 'dispersions' of the 1870's, the Coniston massacre in 1928, and a series of relocations with the spread of mining activity after 1932.
In 1891 the South Australian government gazetted an Aboriginal reserve near the new Overland Telegraph repeater station on Tennant's Creek at Jurnkurakurr, a permanent waterhole and important site.
From this time the Warumungu were forced to leave their land and relocate to the reserve or ally themselves to one of the pastoral properties. This was the first dry season pastoralists had experienced in this area, and at the same time Warumungu people were congregating at Jurnkurakurr. This was a factor in the increasing friction between Warumungu and pastoralists from 1891 onwards, intensifying when the gold rush coincided with the poor seasons from 1931-35.3
'Dispersions', was the euphemism used at the time for indiscriminate killing of Aboriginal people and occurred from the 1870's on in surrounding areas. The wild time or the cowboy time continued into the 1920's in places like the country of the Alyawarr west of Lake Nash.
The Warlpiri, whose country lies to the south west of Warumungu land, fought back against the Europeans, men and women shoulder to shoulder.4 But after the killings at Coniston in 1928 numbers of Warlpiri moved to the Telegraph Station reserve on Tennant Creek, where a police ration depot was set up.
In 1932 gold was found in the hills to the south of the Telegraph Station. There were several mining leases granted within the Reserve, and in July 1934 the Reserve was revoked and a new one set up further to the east, away from Jurnkurakurr and in country with limited water and bush tucker.
From 1943 some Warumungu, Warlmanpa, Warlpiri, Alyawarr and Kaytetye occupied the Six Mile Mission. In August 1945 this was abandoned because of the shortage of water during a drought, and 215 people were moved to the 'native settlement' established at Phillip Creek.
The Warumungu and others continued to live on the old reserve, some even after the establishment of Phillip Creek. By 1961 the second Reserve to the east of the Telegraph Station was also cancelled in favour of a pastoralist's application to graze cattle there.
Aboriginal people worked in the pastoral and mining industries for rations and some clothes. Conditions varied for Aboriginal people on cattle stations, according to individual bosses, but it did allow freedom to maintain language and kinship systems, and the seasonal nature of cattle work allowed a rich ceremonial life to continue at night and during the summer months.
In the 1930's and 1940's the township of Tennant Creek was out of bounds to Aboriginal people, although the Phillip Creek (mission) mob were allowed in twice a week, on Thursday, and Saturday nights for the cinema. By 1940 all places within a radius of five miles from the newly built Stuart Highway, as well as the workers' camps, were prohibited to Aborigines.
In 1956 Warumungu and Warlpiri from Phillip Creek were moved to Warrabri, now called Ali Curung, Alekarange, in Kaytetye country 170 kilometres south of the present town of Tennant Creek. Many of them walked back again. Over the years, some Alyawarr people moved to Warrabri, so that the settlement divided roughly into two sections, with the Alyawarr and Kaytetye people from the east living on the eastern side, and the people from the west including the Warlpiri and Warumungu living on the western side. It was an unnatural grouping which created tension.
Aboriginal people were granted citizenship rights in 1967. They were granted equal wages in December 1968 but many pastoral properties turned Aboriginal people away rather than pay wages. Families drifted to town, setting up fringe camps.
Originally the town camps, or urban living areas, of Tennant Creek reflected the directions from which various groups of people came to town. From the 1960's Village Camp on the southern side of Tennant Creek was set aside as a camp for people from Warrabri who wanted to work in town.
Mulga Camp had long served as the camping place for people from the Barkly stations. Mulga came to have a largely Warumungu population, as did Tingkkarli camp. Wuppa Camp was made up of people from the Barkly Tableland and Borroloola, Karguru Camp of Warumungu, Alyawarr and Kaytetye, while Warlpiri people were concentrated in Village Camp, Dump Camp and Blueberry Hill.
One thing the camps shared was a lack of shelter and amenities. Until the mid-1970's the Village was the only serviced Aboriginal living area in Tennant Creek. Other people established fringe camps for privacy or to avoid the social problems of the Village, but most of these were forced to move back to the Village. In 1982 Kargaru, the largest camp covering 25 hectares, had one tap.
The developed town camp for linguistic or extended family groups is now accepted by Aboriginal people, governments and the wider community as the best means of preserving Aboriginal social and cultural values . . . . while adopting a lifestyle in an urban European setting, people still retain many of the cultural and social values and responsibilities. These include mourning rituals and observances, initiation ceremonies, kinship and other cultural obligations.5
Today Aboriginal people live in the town and in the six main town camps or urban living areas housing more than 900 people. The majority of Aboriginal residents have lived in Tennant Creek for many years, and will stay in town for the rest of their lives. Non-Aboriginal residency was historically short-term.
Planning the Centre
In 1995 when planning commenced Traditional Owners said:
o We must protect the Nyinkka Nyunyu site
o It must be a grog free area
o The development must recognise that this is Warumungu land
o We want to tell the history of the Warumungu people from an Aboriginal viewpoint
o We want to create a place in town where young people can learn from old people as well as learn dance and some traditional skills
o Young people should be involved in this project and learn how to manage this place one day
o Visitors are welcome
Julalikari is developing the Nyinkka Nyunyu Centre through a comprehensive participatory planning process involving all Principal Custodians and ultimately the whole Aboriginal community along with Julalikari management, the project team of consultants including artist, architects, landscape architects and project coordinator. The aim of this process is to ensure community ownership of the project and to develop a sustainable management system.
Julalikari Workshops is the construction and maintenance arm of JCAC, currently completing a 37 house contract under HIPP and NAHS funding totalling more than $5.8 million.
Workshops will construct the buildings using local Aboriginal labour some of whom are custodians of the site. The landscaping is being carried out by Julalikari CDEP landscaping team. Karguru Nursery, another Julalikari enterprise, is working with Warumungu people to collect seeds and propagate local plants for the Centre. Julalikari Arts and Crafts is making tiles and other decorative elements.
Local artists Peggy Napangardi Jones and Day Day Frank Jakkamarra are creating significant public sculptures for the garden.
Objectives
o The Nyinkka Nyunyu Centre will respect and protect the Nyinkka Nyunyu sacred site
o Warumungu custodians will control the direction and functions of the Centre
o A primary objective of the Centre is to strengthen ongoing cultural maintenance and practice
o The Centre will provide training, employment and income for local Aboriginal people
o The Centre will foster excellence in the ongoing development of artists
o The Centre aims for all staffing positions to be filled by local Aboriginal people
o The Nyinkka Nyunyu Centre will create an open and participatory work environment which supports positive change, rewards innovation and provides growth, security and equal opportunities to all employees.
This article is an extract from the Nyinkka Nyunyu book written by Elizabeth Tregenza, September 2000.
Acknowledgments
1. Refer Pippendrie et al: Australian Tourist Commission International Visitor Survey on Aboriginal Tourism. February 2000.
2. John Tregenza, JCAC Community Development Plan. 2000
3. D. Nash, The Warumungu's Reserves 1892-1962: a case study in dispossession, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1984/number 1, 2-16
4. Valda Napurrula Shannon, personal comment
5. Julian Wigley, Lease Application for Julalikari Council Incorporated, March 1986