Aus Aboriginal club+shield

[Tim Simmons]

Lifted from the National Museum Australia.

The digging stick

Another powerful item that the Djang'kawu brought to Yalangbara was the ceremonial digging stick mawalan (also wapitja and djota), used to create freshwater holes on their travels.

The term mawalan can refer to either a digging stick or a paddle, because the oars were used by the Djang'kawu during their sea voyage to Yalangbara to create freshwater pools at various places in the sea.

Once on land, the Sisters continued to create freshwater wells by plunging their mawalan into the previously barren earth. They did this in each of the Dhuwa clan countries they visited, leaving their mawalan as a symbol of their creativity and authority. The water that it created is likened to 'the fluid or source of Yolngu knowledge'.

To emphasise its embodiment of ritual knowledge and land ownership, the senior Rirratjingu men presented a ceremonial mawalan to the Australian government during the Gove land rights case. They believed that the digging stick piercing the ground to create Djang'kawu law and knowledge was like the parliamentary rod opening the doors of parliament. Both staffs in this context symbolise the gaining of entry to culturally different, though equivalent, systems of power.

The exhibited digging stick normally displayed in Parliament House next to the famous Yirrkala Bark Petition has been generously loaned for the Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu exhibition.

Although this stick is from Arnhem Land not the central desert I would not be surprised to find similar culture elsewhere.

[VANDOO]

MANY NOMADIC TRIBES CARRIED FEW BELONGINGS SO WHERE POSSIBLE ONE ITEM COULD SERVE MANY PURPOSES. SO THIS COULD BE USED AS A DIGGING STICK, CLUB, CEREMONIAL OBJECT OR ANY OTHER NEEDED PURPOSE.
THE FIJI BOWAI MAKES A GOOD WAR CLUB AND IF THIS ABORIGINAL CLUB IS HEAVIER AND ALMOST AS LONG IT WOULD CERTAINLY SERVE AS A GOOD HEAD KNOCKER. IF A DIGGING STICK IT SHOWS NO WEAR FROM USE AT EITHER END SO PERHAPS WAS ONLY A CEREMONIAL OBJECT. TRUTH IS WE CAN NEVER BE SURE BUT I WOULD NOT WANT TO BE CONKED WITH IT.

[Tim Simmons]

I have been searching the National Museum of Australia . Entering club into the data base and found this example at 1070mm so a little shorter than mine. This example shows the same damage as mine. The only other information is ; JW Lindo collection.
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[Tim Simmons]

More information that kind of fits my hypothesis that my items are at the very least from the first half of the 20th century perhaps even before the 1930s. Here is an extract from; Hunting the collectors, Pacific collections in the Australian museum of art.

Sir Charles Murr a commonwealth government minister, presented two model canoes he had been given by " native chiefs of Bouganville" as noted AIA catalogue card, and finally a large collection of both Aboriginal and Pacific material was received in 1935 or 1936 donated by South Australian pastoralist JW Lindo.

[Tim Simmons]

A link about shields all be it about revival in the rain forest region. It does have some information about paint.
http://earthsci.org/aboriginal/ngadj...a%20Shield.htm