They appear out of nowhere. A series of rusted car wrecks baked into the red dirt flanking the Great Northern Highway near Warmun, a small Indigenous township in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Some are wreathed in a tangle of weeds, others so molten the earth might swallow them whole.
It’s a visually arresting sight, but to Gija woman Madeline Purdie these decaying relics are a potent reminder of her childhood. “When I was growing up in Warmun, there were probably only three cars in the whole community,” she says. “Every day we would go out bush and we’d all jump on the tray, packed like sardines. People were sitting on our laps, on the roof, on the bull bars. No one got left behind.”
Purdie, an artist and the chairperson of the Warmun Arts Centre, continues: “If you break down, no one’s coming to get you. So the cars, they stay out there on the land.”
Purdie’s family had a 1975 Mazda ute that met the same fate: breaking down and later being scorched by fire. In its heyday, the ute crisscrossed the Kimberley on fishing and camping trips, but this month it’s going on its biggest adventure yet: as the centrepiece of WA-based production company Tura New Music’s ambitious new work The Journey Down, which premiered in Kununurra on 24 August.
As dusk settles, more than 400 people gather on the grass at Kununurra Picture Gardens on Miriwoong Country, excitedly awaiting the debut of this spectacle of music, dance and storytelling six years in the making.
Families huddle on picnic rugs, with Miriwoong and Gija mob catching up, kids and dogs running amok and a team of yes campaigners for the voice to parliament – all here to see the Warnarral Ngoorrngoorrool (Gija for “old car”). That 1975 Mazda ute has been transformed into a musical instrument enveloped in Gija artworks, with film and animation illuminating the richness of Aboriginal culture in the Kimberley, stories of journey and displacement and the mythology of the Australian outback.
Tonight is just the beginning of its itinerant journey south, with the month-long tour of art, sound and performances weaving across 3,456km and 12 stops from Kununurra to Perth, where the car wreck – which travels on a trailer towed by a ute – will go on permanent display at the WA Museum Boola Bardip. The intercultural collaboration features Gija, Miriwoong and Yamatji artists alongside non-Indigenous performers.
The premiere kicks off with more than 15 Miriwoong dancers erupting into the celebratory tradition known as the Wanga, writhing to the beat of clapsticks and didjeridu. It’s a wild, pulsating display and the audience is transfixed.
“We call it rock’n’roll,” says Chris Griffiths, a Miriwoong cultural adviser and lead dancer in the production, alongside Miriwoong man Preben Nigarmara and Gija man Andrew “Pelican” Daylight. “The music, it runs through your body. That’s what makes the Wanga so powerful. This is the first time we are taking it beyond the Kimberley, to Port Hedland and all the way down to Perth.”
Before long, the car wreck takes centre stage, soaked in dappled light and surrounded by musicians Vanessa Tomlinson, Aviva Endean and Tristan Parr. Armed with cello bows and mallets, they produce a ghostly symphony of rhythms, rattles and sonic vibrations.
“It’s an incredible sound,” says Tos Mahoney, the artist director of Tura New Music and creative producer of The Journey Down. “It’s visceral, it’s bassy and it’s rough, but that’s its beauty – it’s the opposite of a pure violin sound. Some of the Gija artists said it sounds like their Country.”
The car itself was remodelled by maverick musician Jon Rose, building on his acclaimed project Wreck, which saw decaying vehicles transformed into powerful, amplified sound sculptures. “He welded two bonnets on to the roof; a cheeky wink to the opera house sails because, of course, this car is an Aussie icon,” says Mahoney. “There’s another bonnet on the back of the car. There’s all the tins and there’s four fence wires that together create this resonant wall of sound.”
Beyond the old car, the musicians offer a rich score for the entirety of the performance, with rustic instruments made from corrugated iron, plastic tube and tins, alongside the cello and the clarinet. Yamatji man Mark Atkins, one the world’s best-known didjeridu players, delivers a haunting solo at the latter end of the evening in one of the night’s most affecting moments.
It’s a layered production that defies simple definition. The car is not just an instrument but a canvas for Gija stories, with its rusted frame featuring commissioned artworks by Gija painters, including Purdie’s mother Shirley Purdie, Gordon Barney, Lindsay Malay, Nancy Nodea, Gabriel Nodea, Mark Nodea, Eddie Nulgit and Charlene Carrington.
The stories told by the Gija artworks are explored in video interviews and animations by Sohan Hayes, projected on to a corrugated iron screen. Shirley Purdie talks about being a mischievous young girl catching rides with her uncle, while Barney reflects on a devastating massacre story and Carrington’s painting is a parable about the ubiquitous boab tree.
Among the crowd at the opening is Madeline Purdie. “I cried watching that car light up with all the sound and stories,” she says. “But it was happy tears. It made me think of the old people who left us.”
The night after the premiere, The Journey Down makes the 200km pilgrimage to Warmun, returning to the car’s birthplace to perform for the Gija community.
Four generations of Purdie’s family are there and her granddaughter is singing with the local primary school as the warm-up act. It’s an intimate family affair.
Instead of the Wanga, this evening begins with a stirring performance of Goorirr-goorirr: a special form of Gija dance and storytelling that came to the artist Rover Thomas in a dream. Among the performers is Thomas’s granddaughter Jane, who painted a series of storyboards that the dancers balance above on their shoulders.
Much like the Warnarral Ngoorrngoorrool, it’s a poignant symbol of Gija culture and an embodiment of their commitment to preserving stories through art.
“When we practise and showcase our culture, our dance, our stories and our history, we are not only showing it to you, we are reminding ourselves of our obligations,” Griffiths says.
“There’s some sad stories, some happy stories and some stories to try and lift us up from the hole that us Indigenous people have been in for so long.
“We have our own ways, we have our own stories and they are real.”
• The Journey Down continues its 12-stop trip from Kununurra to Perth through September, before Warnarral Ngoorrngoorrool becomes part of the permanent exhibition at WA Museum Boola Bardip. Guardian Australia travelled to Kununurra and Warmun as a guest of Tura New Music
