Dreaming stories aren't only ancient. Some, like the Witchdoctor and Windmill Dreaming, tell of a specific, remembered moment when the old world met the new, and they're painted today with the same respect and cultural weight as any ancestral creation story.
The Witchdoctor and the Windmill
The Witchdoctor and the Windmill is a first-contact story, painted many times over by senior Pintupi artist Linda Syddick Napaltjarri. It recalls a real journey her family group made in 1945, when they walked out of their traditional Pintupi homelands near Lake Mackay in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia, heading roughly 350 kilometres east across rugged sandhill country toward the Haasts Bluff Mission. Linda was around eight years old at the time.
As the group travelled, a respected Nangkari (traditional healer) and his two wives fell behind as they neared Mount Liebig. The elderly Nangkari lay down to rest and fell asleep before he ever saw what lay ahead, but his wives spotted a windmill turning in the distance and, having never encountered one, fled into the bush in fright.
When the Nangkari woke and saw the windmill's blades spinning and roaring in the wind, he too had no framework for what he was looking at. Believing it to be the evil spirit Mamu, he threw spears at it to protect his people, and when those failed, called on his own magic power, but nothing stopped the windmill's motion. It was Linda's step-father, Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, a custodian of many Dreaming stories and a man already familiar with European settlement, who went back for the missing trio. He explained to the Nangkari that this wasn't a spirit at all, but a machine built to draw water from the ground. Once the Nangkari drank from the water it produced and found it good, he was reassured, and the group continued on their journey together.
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri has returned to this story across many canvases, painting the whirring windmill blades, the Nangkari and her step-father Shorty Lungkata, the spears and belongings carried from the desert, and the family group camped nearby using traditional symbols, with the sandhills of the desert country shown all around as a reminder of where they had travelled from.
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri is a senior Pintupi artist known for painting personal and family stories alongside traditional Tingari Dreamings, including the Witchdoctor and Windmill story that documents her own family's first encounter with settler technology. Her work is held in major Australian collections and is widely recognised for the way it bridges lived family history with the broader Pintupi Dreaming tradition.
Explore Other Dreaming Stories
The Warlpiri Water Dreaming Story
The Warlpiri Water Dreaming story, Ngapa Jukurrpa, is one of the major Dreamings of the Tanami Desert, centred on sites such as Puyurru and Pirlinyanu, west of Yuendumu. It tells of two Jangala men, rainmakers, who sang the rain and unleashed a giant storm that joined with another from the west. A brown falcon, Kirrkarlanji, carried the storm onward until it grew too heavy and fell at Pirlinyarnu, forming a great lake still visited by flocks of bush ducks whenever it rains. At Puyurru, the falcon is said to have dug up a rainbow serpent, which carried water with it to form another lake. The custodians of this Dreaming are Jangala and Jampijinpa men and Nangala and Nampijinpa women, and it continues to be painted by Warlpiri artists today using traditional iconography for rain clouds, floodwaters and soakages.
Fire Dreaming Waru Tjukurrpa
Waru Tjukurrpa, or Fire Dreaming, relates to the traditional use of fire for hunting and land management. One well-documented telling, associated with Utantja near the meeting point of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia, shows land being burned off in a controlled way, flushing out lizards, snakes and goannas for hunters waiting ahead of the fire line. A separate Fire Dreaming track tells of two Tjangala men who carried fire south from Yuendumu to Watarru in South Australia, where they drove a fire stick into the ground, forming a hole and a mountain, before returning north, leaving behind spirit-figures still held by the children of that country today. Fire Dreaming remains one of the most widely painted Dreamings across Central Australia, often shown through sweeping fields of red and white representing flame and burnt ground.
Lightning Dreaming Story
Lightning Dreaming is often painted alongside Water Dreaming, reflecting how closely the two are connected in Aboriginal understanding of the land: lightning heralds the rainstorms that fill waterholes and renew Country. In Australia's drier savannah regions, lightning is also linked to bushfire, since dry electrical storms can spark fires that sweep across open grassland — a natural cycle that many native plants have adapted to rely on for regeneration. Artists from the Top End, including sisters Sarrita King and Tarisse King, are known for paintings drawing on the tropical lightning storms of their childhood in Darwin, rendered in bold, dynamic colour and pattern.
Coomaditchie Dreaming Stories
Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation, based in the Illawarra region south of Sydney, is a keeper and teacher of local Dharawal Dreaming stories, known in the Illawarra as Alcheringa. Elders at Coomaditchie share these stories with children through oral storytelling and community art projects, including tellings of the Five Islands creation story, the story of Gurangaty and the region's rivers, and stories connected to the local landscape's plants and animals. These Dreamings explain the creation of the land, and carry teachings passed down from the creator figure Biamie and his son Duramulan.
Mt Keira Dreaming Story
One of the best-known Dharawal Dreaming stories of the Illawarra region tells of Oola-boola-woo, the west wind, who lived atop the escarpment above what is now Wollongong with his six daughters. One by one, five of the daughters misbehaved, and their father cast them out to sea along with the stone beneath them, where they became the Five Islands off the coast of Port Kembla. The sixth daughter, Geera, was left alone on the mountain top, watching over her sisters far out at sea. Over time she sat so still that she turned to stone, becoming Mount Keira, the mountain that still overlooks the Five Islands today. Mount Keira holds particular significance as a women's site for the Wadi Wadi people of the Illawarra.
Barramundi Dreaming
Barramundi Dreaming, Daiwul Ngarranggarni, belongs to the Gija people of the East Kimberley, centred on Country near Warmun and the site now known as Barramundi Gap. In the story, a group of women fish for a giant barramundi, Daiwul, using traditional spinifex-grass nets, but the barramundi outwits them, leaping clear over the net and the women. As she flew through the air, her scales scattered across the land, becoming the diamonds later found in the region, including at what became the Argyle Diamond Mine. Barramundi Dreaming is a significant women's story in Gija culture, and has been painted by generations of senior Gija women artists.
Seven Sisters Dreaming
The Seven Sisters Dreaming is one of the most widely shared Dreamings in Aboriginal Australia, with songlines running across more than half the continent through many different language groups. The story follows seven ancestral sisters, represented in the night sky by the Pleiades star cluster, as they journey across the country pursued by a man, sometimes identified as the hunter now seen as the star Orion or, in Central Australian tellings, a Jampijinpa man who continues to chase them across the sky each night. Custodianship of the story in Central Australia belongs to the Napaljarri and Nungarrayi women's skin groups and the Japaljarri and Jungarrayi men's skin groups, and different sections of the songline are held and told by different communities along its path.
Shop the Collection
Every artwork in this collection is created by Aboriginal artists with the cultural authority to paint these stories, supporting artists and their communities directly. When you buy through Mandel Aboriginal Art Gallery, you're supporting the continuation of these stories for future generations, backed by clear provenance and a direct connection to Country. Contact us to explore the vivid world of Aboriginal Dreamings.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the story of the Witchdoctor and the Windmill?
It's a first-contact Dreaming story painted by Pintupi artist Linda Syddick Napaltjarri, recalling her family's 1945 journey out of the Gibson Desert, when an elderly Nangkari mistook a windmill for an evil spirit until her step-father explained it was a water-drawing machine.
Who is Linda Syddick?
Linda Syddick Napaltjarri is a senior Pintupi artist known for combining personal family history, including the Witchdoctor and Windmill story, with traditional Tingari Dreaming subjects in her paintings.
What is a Dreaming story?
A Dreaming story is a traditional Aboriginal narrative explaining the creation of the land, animals and people, and the Law that flows from it. Dreaming stories are held by specific families and language groups and remain a living, ongoing tradition rather than a fixed record of the past.
What is the Warlpiri Water Dreaming story?
Ngapa Jukurrpa tells of two Jangala rainmakers who sang a great storm into being, carried across the country by a falcon until it fell as rain and formed the lakes and soakages still found in Warlpiri Country today.
What is Fire Dreaming, Waru Tjukurrpa?
Fire Dreaming relates to the traditional use of fire for hunting and land management, and to specific ancestral stories of fire being carried across Country, shown in art through sweeping fields of red and white.
