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National Geographic : 1966 Feb
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lost persons and criminals over deserts and through the bush with the baffling skill they began to acquire in earliest childhood. Some trackers still work at Alice Springs, though Police Inspector G. L. Ryall told me that the automobile and the bitumen had largely done away with the need for them. I met the inspector's two trackers-quiet, taciturn men in khaki uniforms. "Yes, I can tell all the tracks," tall Walbiri tribesman Larry Jabaljari admitted, as if the skill were so commonplace as not to be worth mentioning. "They're different." His mate, Willie Martin, nodded approval. One Track May Tell a Whole Story I gathered that to them a track-whether of lizard, snake, wallaby, emu, aborigine, white man, or child-was not just a blur left uselessly in the bush. It was a picture story. The local tribe is the Aranda, or Arunta. To the southwest and over the South Austral ian border live the Pitjantjara. Northwest of these, on two government settlements and a few cattle stations, are the Walbiri. They With a bold brush Gabriel Namatjira por trays the ghost gums and dramatic terrain of his native land (left). Landscapes by Albert Namatjira, his grandfather, won world ac claim and inspired fellow tribesmen to paint. Second-generation Namatjiras, Oscar and Keith (below), turn out quick sketches that tourists buy at Alice Springs for $15 apiece. But the brothers amass little wealth; tribal law demands they share earnings with their many relatives. They work in water colors because dust and flies stick to oils. KODACHROMESBY JEFF CARTERO N.G.S. Now many are worth thousands of pounds. "The Australian aborigine can be a talent ed and an able man," said Rex Battarbee. "For years we thought him capable only of scrawling rough totemic designs-circles, spirals, bird tracks, animal footprints-on bits of bark or the dark walls of caves. Look at this work by Ewald, Albert's son." We looked at a striking painting of a moun tainous landscape after a rain squall, with an astonishing quality and amazing light. "No artist could have done better in this manner," Battarbee concluded. This awareness of the natives' artistic abil ity is relatively new. For decades they have been regarded mainly as convenient stock men on cattle stations, or useful trackers for the police. Their practiced eyes can trail 249
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