Noongar Mambara Bakitj

Noongar Spirit Flight

A young man follows a kangaroo track deep into the old people’s country. Along the way he meets some spirit creatures (‘mambara’) who allow him to go on. But after he has hunted down the kangaroo, one mambara is angry and demands a fight (‘bakitj’). All day they fight, until the Noongar discovers he is a magic person and defeats the mambara.

Noongar Mambara Bakitj is inspired by a story Bob Roberts and Freddie Winmer told the American linguist Gerhardt Laves at Albany, Western Australia, around 1931 and has been workshopped in a series of community meetings, which included some of the contemporary family of both Bob Roberts and Freddie Winmer. This story is told in old Noongar, contemporary Noongar and English.