Gulumbu explained that some stars (ganyu) are special for Yolngu.

This painting refers to but does not specify two ‘dreamtime’ stories, which each represent different constellations, that the artist was told by her father as child. Her father was Munggurrawuy Yunupingu. The authors ‘little brothers’ are Galarrwuy and Mandawuy Yunupingu. She retells the stories for children of the new generation. She also paints them. Since a screen of sixty odd small star-based bark paintings were shown in the World Expo in Hanover Germany in 2000 she has developed this motif. It is very unlike other North East Arnhem land art which is almost always based on fine cross-hatched sacred design. Even decorative works usually employ lines rather than dots. What is also unusual about this work vis a vis other works of the region and also Gulumbu’s own star works is the absence of any figurative imagery. This adds an abstract quality to the piece but also means that it doesn’t differentiate between the stories she normally uses this design as a backdrop for. For that reason in this documentation we record both stories. Ganyu is the Yolngu word for stars.

The first story is about two sisters called Guthayguthay and Nhayay. Guthayguthay is the elder sister and sits at the biggest fire, she and Nhayay who is the younger sister and has a smaller fire. The elder sister is able to carry bigger fire wood than the younger sister who can only carry small fire wood. In the olden days these two sisters used to be people, but they turned into stars that sit in the sky under the Milky Way.

When the seasons here are hot the two sisters are arguing and sitting apart from each other with different fires.These arguments are often over a man called Marrngu. When the seasons are cooler the two sisters are seen together sitting by one big fire. They are surrounded by more stars when they are sitting together. When you look in the sky long enough you will see two women figures sitting near two bright stars, which are their fires burning.

The second story is about seven sisters who went out in their canoe called Djulpan. During certain seasons they go hunting for food and always come back with different types of food. They come back with turtle, fish , freshwater snakes and also bush foods like yams and berries. They can be seen in the sky of a night , seven stars that come out together.

The stars come in season when the food and berries come out, the stars will travel through the sky during that month until the season is over and they don’t come out until the next season. Gulumbu’s father told her about these seven sisters in a canoe, and the three brothers who came behind them, following them. They travel west. There are special stars in the sky which Yolngu call wishing stars. They give Yolngu bush tucker, they multiply the foods in the sea – that’s why Yolngu are happy to see them. That’s what Gulumbu’s father told her.

When she looks at the stars, Gulumbu thinks about the universe, all around, and about every tribe, every colour. In every corner of the world people can look up and see the stars. This is Gulumbu’s vision – in her art, she focuses on the link between all people everywhere. The link between people on earth and stars in the sky – it’s real. Gulumbu links this idea to the Garma, where people from everywhere can come and relax, look up and see stars.

Gulumbu recently conducted an interview with Hetti Perkins. This is a translation of her words;

“This is not a sacred story. This is a story for everybody to see. It refers to the Djurrpun, the Evening Star, that my father used to sing as it rose just after dusk. And as a child I remember those stories of Djurrpun.

But Djurrpun is a sacred story that belongs not just to the Gumatj, but to other clans. And so I have taken any miny’tji or sacred design out of this, and just left myself with the stars.

And I am thinking that the people -- the millions and billions of people in the world are, you know, just sitting there looking at the stars and think, ’Well how can we be separate if we’re all under the same stars? We are like the stars, in that we -- there are as many stars as there are people’.

Where does the spirit go? Because the bones decompose, break down and go back to the land from which they come. "I don’t know." But maybe it goes to the sky. Maybe it goes to the water. Maybe it goes to the land. And then again maybe that’s where the spirits go. To the stars.

And that all of the different colours that I use, the black, like, my own colour, or the yellow, or the white, or the pink, they could be all the colours of the people within the world, as that’s what’s -- they’re colours I use to paint the stars.

When I was a little girl we were on the beach somewhere, we were camped out on the beach, but we didn’t have a shelter, anything. We just had the fire and ourselves camped on the beach.

And then in the middle of the night, I felt rain falling on me. A little bit of rain falling on me. And I said to my mother, "Mum, there’s raining on me." And my mum said, "Oh look, there’s no clouds. Maybe it’s the stars crying."

And from that point on, when I think of that, this is why I always put my stars with an eye. So that -- it must be there because they cry.

So that -- in my father’s painting you’ll see a small amount of these stars, again with the eyes in them. But you won’t see it like this. This is something only from me. But the actual pattern is something that my father gave me.

I was surprised to find this design in a painting from the ’60s from my father, because I didn’t really know that I’d seen that painting. I thought that pattern came from my father’s songs, not from seeing his painting.

And then I saw it. And it was there in a, a photograph.

So this design has come both from my mother and my father. From my mother’s story of the stars crying, and from my father putting that dot in the middle of the stars. And that’s why I call it the eye.

So the cross shape is the body of the star. The outline is indeed the mali, the shadow or spirit of that star. The eye will go in the middle there. And the dots are the stars that are further away, or maybe the people that are further way from us. People we’ve never met before, of different clans or nations that we don’t even know of.”