Doris Bush Nungarrayi

Nyunmanu is a Dingo Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory. Most of the dingoes and their pups from this place rose up into the sky and became stars. However, the ancestral mother Dingo and her pup had gone out hunting and were too tired to rise up, so they turned into a large rock that marks the place of this sacred Dreaming. It is said that if you sleep in this place you will dream of the ancestral dingo puppies. The story goes that if you remove one of the gleaming stones found at Nyunmanu, the puppies will haunt your dreams until you return it to the place where it belongs. The custodians of this Tjukurrpa are Nungarrayi, Tjungarrayi, Napaltjarri and Tjapaltjarri women and men. The circles in this story often represent important waterholes. The roundels extending from the circles are the designs the women paint on their breasts during ceremony.