GUARDIANS OF THE GALLERIES
“BIM! BIM! BIM!” calls Sarah Billis at the top of her voice as the rising sun spreads a torrent of warm light among the eucalypts and turkey bushes at Manmoyi outstation in West Arnhem Land.
Home to the Bininj people, Manmoyi is a small, remote community on the Arnhem Land plateau. Gathered around the smoking embers of the previous night’s campfires, with cups of warm tea cradled in their hands, a few people are waiting for the chill to go off this fine, dry-season morning. They look towards Sarah, a senior Bininj woman, as she repeats her call through a megaphone: “Bim! Bim! Bim!”
Bim is short for kunwarddebim, the Kunwinjku word for rock art. And Sarah’s calls are intended to gather people to go search for these precious cultural works. Whether it’s a cold dry-season morning or a humid day late in the year, looking for bim appeals to most Bininj. It provides an opportunity to travel clan estates, connect with ancestors, and gather and eat bush foods such as sugarbag (the honey of native bees) and seasonal fruit, including mandudjmi (green plum) and mandjarduk (red bush apple). Importantly, the activity imparts knowledge to the young Bininj about culture and land.
The Bininj are traditional occupants of West Arnhem Land, which includes the rugged 22,000sq.km plateau known by speakers of Bininj Kunwok (dialects
