"My design is called Lily Seeds – ‘Yalbun’ in Alawa language. In the olden days my grandparents used it to make damper (‘da ga’ in Kriol). They’d go out to the billabong to collect the lily, take the seed out, spread it out to dry in the sun, smash it up with a rock into flour, put water in it, make it into a damper patty, and then fry it.
In this design there’s the Yalbun (the big circular lily pad), and the seeds – that’s what we eat (the little black dots), and then there’s the Ganaya (the pineapple shaped image) – that sits in the mud. We boil it. Inside it’s like an egg – very yellow. And then there’s Runggai (the hairy one) – that also sits below the water, in the mud, at the bottom of the stem.
