Many of the conventional patterns are not so apparent as the few just mentioned. Let us take, for instance, the “Ladjia” or Yam Tjuringa pattern of the Arunndta. Only the initiated would be able to recognize in a number of groups of small, concentric circles, regularly placed at the corners of rectangular figures, as the stems of the yam plant, and a system of parallel lines connecting the circles both straight and diagonally as the roots. Vide Fig. 34.

Tracks of animal, bird, and man are conspicuous among the designs, generally, whether they be true copies from Nature upon the walls of a cave, more or less modified gravures upon weapons, or conventional patterns incised upon a message stick. A dog track is represented by a larger dot, suggesting the imprint of the ball of the paw, to which are attached four smaller dots, which lie in a row in close proximity to the former; the smaller dots stand for the impressions of the claws (Fig. 35).

A kangaroo track shows the two long parallel median impressions, with a lateral at an acute angle to the former at either side. The same figure is repeated a short distance away from the one described, and in a straight line with it. The same design on a smaller scale denotes a wallaby track. Occasionally the lateral lines are dispensed with (Fig. 36).

Small oblong dots drawn in pair at equal distances from each other indicate the hopping of a rabbit (Fig. 37).

The characteristic broad arrow-like footprint of an emu has already been referred to; the smaller variety of the same design implies that a wild turkey is meant. When a number of birds are to be represented collectively, the archetype is developed into a continuous pattern by linking one track up with another into a chain (Fig. 38).

When attention is to be drawn to the fact that the birds are laying, or sitting on eggs, a number of small circles are drawn about the track (Fig. 39).

A lizard track is indicated by drawing a number of dots, equally spaced along a straight line, and on alternate sides of it. The dots are the claw impressions, the line the trail left by the tail (Fig. 40).

A single wavy line, or a number of parallel wavy lines, represents a snake or a snake track (Fig. 41).

The human footprint is either correctly shown in detail, or is reduced to a short, straight line at one end of which five (occasionally only three or four) dots are drawn in a sloping line to indicate the toes. When walking is to be implied, these footprints are either shown one behind the other in a straight line, at equal distances apart, or they stand alternately right and left by an imaginary central line. The common way of showing the last-named system conventionally is to connect the alternate footprints, whether they be actually shown or not, by a zig-zag line (Fig. 42).

In all cases mentioned above, the track may stand equally well for the object itself.

It is a common thing to see two or more of the above systems combined, after the style of the figures shown on page 344.

The interpretation of the first of these messages would be: “A man is tracking a rabbit.”

The second (Fig. 44) would read: “A hunter is pursuing an emu and is accompanied by his dog.”

In the same way as the natives of the Northern Territory have applied their artistic talents to deciphering images of earthly objects amongst the celestial bodies, and point with pride upon the great emu, “Dangorra,” which nightly watches over them, so the Wongapitcha and Aluridja of central Australia recognize in the constellation we know as the Southern Cross the shape of an eagle-hawk’s claw, and call it in consequence “Warridajinna”; the Milky Way they consider to be a creek bed and assign to it the name “Karru”; the northern Kimberleys tribes believe the Milky Way to be the track of a great carpet snake they refer to as “Womma.”

In the representation of a fish, the scales often take the form of a cross-hatched pattern; but there are many cases in which the form of the fish is not shown at all, yet the cross-hatched pattern remains and is nevertheless indicative of the fish.

A design, fairly common in the north of Western Australia, consists of two wavy lines which are parallel, in the inverted or reflected sense, and joined at one end. The true significance of this pattern does not become evident until one hides from view all but three of the “waves,” say that portion lying to the right of the dotted line in the accompanying sketch. When this is done, the form of a “flying fox” is immediately recognized (Fig. 45).

In central, northern, and eastern Australia, a pattern frequently met with on boomerangs, fighting sticks, and message sticks, consists of strings of lenticles longitudinally striped and generally associated with kangaroo tracks. This device is analogous to the one standing for the walking of a man, viz. the zig-zag, in so far as it stands for the hopping of a kangaroo. Here and there one finds the pattern “finished off” at one end with the head of a kangaroo (Fig. 46).

A duel or tribal fight of any description is graphically recorded by two crossed boomerangs, but the conventional derivative of this design is simply supplied by two crossed lines (Fig. 47).

Time is chronicled by two phases of the moon; a crescent standing for new, and a circle for full moon.

The substance, origin, home, or habitat of any creature figuring in a drawing or gravure is particularized by the addition of a circle-within-circle design. For instance, in the tjuringa of the witchedy grub shown in Fig. 48, the parallel, straight lines, enclosed within a “U,” at the left-hand side, represent the grub, the three concentric circle groups in the centre are the gum trees in which it lives, the “U within U” pattern at the right is an ancestor whose “totem” was the witchedy grub, while the parallel lines at the extreme right of the tjuringa are markings on the grub which have been adopted by the man who owns the tjuringa, in the form of cicatrices, he cuts on his chest.

The “U within U” pattern is frequently met with engraved upon tjuringas, and in most cases it conventionally conveys the idea of a “sitting” person or animal. We have already noted something similar in the peculiar concentric iron stains of Heavitree Gap (page 342), but in the following three tjuringa drawings of the Arunndta additional illustrations are given.

In the first instance, an “Arrera Knaninja” or Kangaroo Tjuringa, the meat and the fat of the animal are represented by the two series of concentric circles in the centre, whereas its sinew is indicated by the horizontal lines connecting the circles. The numerous U groups on both sides of the central figures stand for a great number of kangaroo, each of which is sitting or lying on the ground (Fig. 49).

The second example is from the “Yeapatja” or Caterpillar Tjuringa. The large “circle-within-circle” groups in the centre are generally recognized to be the bushes upon which the caterpillars were born, while the U groups with smaller concentric circles in their centres are intended for caterpillars attached to smaller plants upon which they are feeding (Fig. 50).

Lastly, a sacred drawing of the “Alangua Knaninja” or Native Pear (Marsdenia) “totem,” which belongs to the Altjerringa women, is composed of a central “circle-within-circle” group representing the “totem,” whilst surrounding it a number of U groups are supposed to be the mythic women seated on the ground (Fig. 51).

We shall now turn our attention to the consideration of the representation of the human figure and its derivative forms. Several more or less obvious designs have already been discussed. The first step towards conventionalism is seen in the two figures from the Humbert River district, the first an ochre cave drawing, the second a carving on a boabab tree (Fig. 52). We notice in the ochre drawing, which was one foot six inches high, a fairly shapely and solid figure of a man holding a shield in his left hand; in the carving, which measured one foot nine inches in height, the solid and shapely outline has been reduced to a matter of just a few straight lines; that is, if we neglect for the present the consideration of shield and boomerang which the figure is holding. The result is, therefore, a design resembling a Latin cross, at the lower end of which is attached an inverted V-shaped symbol representing the legs; a small circle may or may not be added to the top end to stand for the head.

This design is often repeated indefinitely in a lateral sense, so that a rather ornate pattern results in which the individual figures “join hands” and their “toes touch” below. A chained pattern, such as is shown in the accompanying sketch (Fig. 53), may be noticed in Plate XLV, 1, near the centre of the picture, below the ledge on which the bold drawing of a snake appears, and on the same level as the semi-human design on the extreme left.

The ultimate stage of this conventionalism so far as the human figure is concerned is a simple, straight line, the upright arm of the cross; this is extensively employed in carved representations of people on message sticks. We might now hark back to the question at the beginning of our disquisition on aboriginal art “what lies in a mere line” and supply one answer at any rate.

Any number of people might be represented by the same number of short, straight, vertical lines. Followed by a zig-zag line, such people are represented as being on the march. When a small dot stands on each side of the straight line, or perhaps a number of dots in intermediate positions between the lines, the design conveys the idea that the people are camped, the dots standing for camp fires. Moreover, when a horizontal line lies over the upright lines, the last-named indicates that a hut, shelter, or breakwind was used during the encampment (Fig. 54).

When there is an obvious, and intended, difference in the lengths of the upright lines, the longer represent men, the shorter women.

Reverting now to the cross, and looking more closely into its development, expansion, and embodiment in anthropomorphous designs, we meet with one or two points of considerable interest.

We have had occasion to note that throughout central and northern Australia, the tribes during the final acts of initiation ceremonies make use of a sacred cross, called “Wanningi” or “Wanninga” in the former region and “Parli” in the western portions of the latter. These wanningi are constructed only immediately before they are required and are destroyed again the moment the ceremony is over. Women are not allowed to see them under any consideration. A wanningi is made by fixing two pieces of wood together in the shape of a cross, then, by starting at the intersection of the arms, a long string, made of human hair, is wound spirally round and round, from arm to arm, until the whole space between the arms is filled in. The size of these crosses varies from three or four inches up to two feet or more. This object is produced by the Aluridja just before the mutilation of the neophyte is to take place. At this critical moment of the youth’s life, when he is stepping from adolescence across the great gap which will lead him to manhood, the spirit of the Great Tukura presides invisibly concealed within the wanningi, but returns to his high abode again when the function is over. Vide Plate XLIII, 2.

The spiral winding of hair-string around the arms of the wanningi associates the idea of the rhombic outline of the string with the arms of the cross. In the representation of the human form, one often finds the two patterns combined, or, it may be, the rhomb replaces the cross.

In the example before us (Fig. 55, a), we have an engraved pattern appearing on a spear-thrower, the motive of which, were it not that the artist had added a human face, would have been very difficult for the untrained eye to recognize. As it is, we have the unmistakable evidence of an anthropomorphous design. Not only does a modified rhomb represent the body of a man, but the figure itself is flourishing the crossed arms of a “Wanningi” in its right hand. The principal design thus identified passes, at the bottom, into a pattern composed of several polygonal figures which may, no doubt, be looked upon as derivatives of an original rhomb.

In the other illustration (Fig. 55, b), which is also a carving upon a spear-thrower, the intricate association of the rhomb with the human form is again apparent. The figure of a man, with face in profile, is represented in a plain and more or less conventional way; the straight trunk with the two arms resting upon the hips, symmetrically on each side, in itself suggests the rhomb, but, in addition, most of the intervening spaces have been filled in with parallel lines and a cross-hatching pattern which embodies the rhomb.

Conventionalism in the representation of the human figure has thus gone further than the mere inclusion of the cross or the rhomb motive, by working in with the original design a derivative or new pattern which fills up all the surrounding spaces.

By means of this system, a new element is introduced in the shape of symmetry. If a vertical line, drawn through the centre of the trunk, be taken as a median line in a simple design of the human figure, all subsequent patterns which are drawn will be grouped symmetrically about it. The most popular pattern used to fill up the available spaces with, is one of a “concentric” type. By this method a distinctive, bi-laterally symmetrical pattern is evolved, which after prolonged usage may actually take the place of the original, and have a true anthropomorphous significance.

Take the illustration of conventionalism of this kind shown on the carved pearl shell covering from King Sound reproduced in Fig. 56. The original motive was a simple line drawing of a human being after the style of the one on the left-hand side. The next stage in its evolution was brought about by blocking the areas between the limbs, and between the head and arm, on either side, respectively, in a manner which made the resulting pattern appear equally balanced in respect of a median longitudinal line running through the back and head of the original figure.

Very numerous designs of this nature are constantly met with in all tribal areas of Australia, but in most cases the stranger who is not aware of the intermediate or transitional stages may fail entirely to grasp their meaning or origin.