'Desert Lake is a book combining artistic, scientific and Indigenous views of a striking region of north-western Australia. Paruku is the place that white people call Lake Gregory. It is Walmajarri land, and its people live on their Country in the communities of Mulan and Billiluna.This is a story of water. When Sturt Creek flows from the north, it creates a massive inland Lake among the sandy deserts. Not only is Paruku of national significance for waterbirds, but it is has also helped uncover the past climatic and human history of Australia.The Walmajarri people of Paruku understand themselves in relation to Country, a coherent whole linking the environment, the people and the Law that governs their lives. These understandings are encompassed by the Waljirri or Dreaming and expressed through the songs, imagery and narratives of enduring traditions. "Desert Lake" is embedded in this broader vision of Country and provides a rich visual and cross-cultural portrait of an extraordinary part of Australia.' (Source: TROVE)
'This volume represents a brilliant fusion of Traditional Knowledge, origin narratives, Western science and contemporary art. It is based on ‘deep-time’ complex human–landscape relationships from a highly significant lake system known as Paruku in the south-east Kimberley region. Known on cartographic charts as Lake Gregory, it is the only co-ordinated drainage system that flows from the east Kimberley into the expansive linear dune fields of the Great Sandy Desert. The lake was once a mega-lake, many times its current size, reflecting massive monsoonal rains more akin to central Indonesia than the present Kimberley desert edge. It hosted an enhanced aquatic and avian fauna and was likely a highly attractive lake for early settlers — being surrounded by savannah woodlands and grasses with grazing terrestrial fauna. Indeed, it was at such major water bodies that peoples transitioned into the desert hunter gatherer adaptations we think of today as the ethnographic norm. They persisted in an increasingly arid landscape — with lakes as a chain of connection to previous pluvial states.' (Introduction)
'This volume represents a brilliant fusion of Traditional Knowledge, origin narratives, Western science and contemporary art. It is based on ‘deep-time’ complex human–landscape relationships from a highly significant lake system known as Paruku in the south-east Kimberley region. Known on cartographic charts as Lake Gregory, it is the only co-ordinated drainage system that flows from the east Kimberley into the expansive linear dune fields of the Great Sandy Desert. The lake was once a mega-lake, many times its current size, reflecting massive monsoonal rains more akin to central Indonesia than the present Kimberley desert edge. It hosted an enhanced aquatic and avian fauna and was likely a highly attractive lake for early settlers — being surrounded by savannah woodlands and grasses with grazing terrestrial fauna. Indeed, it was at such major water bodies that peoples transitioned into the desert hunter gatherer adaptations we think of today as the ethnographic norm. They persisted in an increasingly arid landscape — with lakes as a chain of connection to previous pluvial states.' (Introduction)
