George Tjangala Wallaby was of the Walmajarri language group, and Jangala skin group. He was one of the main custodians of the large interior salt and fresh water lake - Lake Gregory (Paruku or as the artist pronounced it "Baraku") in the Great Sandy Desert. It was also his traditional name, and where he was born, with Floodwater Dreaming. As a young man, he worked the Canning Stock Route droving cattle and, when stock work ceased after the introduction of equal wages in the 1960s, he moved to Kununurra. A respected law man and painter, Paruku was known there as the ‘rainmaker’. His dreaming (totem) was flood water. Nearly all of Wallaby's work shows country around Sturt Creek and Paruku. During the tropical monsoons Sturt Creek becomes a major floodway and fills Paruku. He depicted the myriad of channels that make up Sturt Creek just before it becomes the lake, depicLng his dreaming of floodwater, showing country around Sturt Creek in the Great Sandy Desert that is affected by flooding during the wet seasons of the north. Other work is of Lirrejapal (Frog ) Dreaming country on Sturt Creek in the Great Sandy Desert. When the floodwater recedes and the ground begins to harden and crack (someLmes as symmetrically as the painLng suggests) Lirrejapal goes under ground and can hibernate for many years or unLl the next flood comes.
Hi painted for Warlayirti Artists, Balgo in the early 1990s and later when living outside of Kununurra with his wife Nellie Gordon (also a painter) he was represented by Red Rock Art, Kununurra.
His work was exhibited in Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route, WA at the NaLonal Museum of Australia.
