Shirley Purdie has painted three stories. On the right is country that lies just west of Warmun; the site of a war between Aboriginal people, it is also the site of the Kangaroo Tail Dreaming.

In the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) there were two kangaroos – the big rock kangaroo and the white-chested kangaroo. The rock kangaroo went to a place called Jack Yard and the white-chested kangaroo went to Karlungkutji, and turned into stone.

The painting shows the kangaroo stone at Karlungkutji. In the early days people used to rub the stone, and set up a trap for the white-chested kangaroos that would always come by.

This painting shows two massacre stories. On the left is country that lies just west of Warmun; the site of a war between Aboriginal people, it is also the site of the Kangaroo Tail Dreaming.

In the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) there were two kangaroos - the big rock kangaroo and the white-chested kangaroo. The rock kangaroo went to a place called Jack Yard and the white-chested kangaroo went to Karlungkutji, and turned into stone. The painting shows the kangaroo stone at Karlungkutji.

In the early days people used to rub the stone, and set up a trap for the white-chested kangaroos that would always come by. On the right is the Mistake Creek massacre. At Mistake Creek, not far from Warmun (Turkey Creek) there was a large twisted jurmulun (boab tree).

A massacre occurred beside this tree in the late 1920s. The manager of the old post office at Turkey Creek instructed an Aboriginal stockman from the Northern Territory to look for his milking cow which had gone missing. While looking for the cow the stockman found a group of Gija people who were on holiday (from the stations) camped at Mistake Creek this large jurmulun (boab tree). They had been hunting a big mob of kangaroo and ’porcupine’ (echidna) and were cooking a kangaroo in the fire.

The stockman returned to the manager and told him that the Gija people had killed the cow and were cooking it. The manager saddled up his horses and went to Mistake Creek where they rounded up a group of approximately 26 Gija men, women and children against a large boab tree. One man escaped and ran back to Turkey Creek to tell the police. However when the police arrived it was too late and everyone had been shot and their bodies burnt.

The police then opened up the camp fire and found it was in fact a kangaroo cooking. The Aboriginal man from Darwin jumped on his horse and galloped away, so the policemen chased him and shot him down. The police made the manager walk from Turkey Creek to Halls Creek for court and back again (320km). He was kicked out of the community and told never to come back.

Today there is a memorial beside the tree in the place where the people were killed and the soil remains black were the bodies had been burned.