Doris Nungarrayi has painted a plentiful memory from her past in the early days when she was learning from her mother at Wilura and Nyumanu – a Dingo Dreaming site just to the southeast of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory.  

She talks of her and her mother handling different types of Mangarri (food). As Doris talks about these memories, she enacts the handling and eating of mai (food), drinking kapi (water) and of breaking open pura (big wild bush

tomatoes) to eat the flesh and collecting and eating of ilyuru (a sweet natural cotton-candy.like bush food). She talks of different tools to do this like wana (digging sticks) and speaks of other parts of the fruitful landscape such as witya (trees).

These days, when Doris sits in Papunya to paint, she sits under a large watiya (tree). She remembers that this same type of watiya was at Nyumanu too, and her and her mother would sit under it. Doris recalls the whole family sitting around nikiti way (without clothes in the old days) and without any other Western tools. Doris explains “Billy can wiya! Blanket wiya! (no billy cans, no blankets!) Just running around!”