Summary

This funnel is the type made to be embeded into the downstream side of a mud weir built to trap fish at the end of the wet season.

Local Name

gorl

Physical Description

A single sheet of stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) that is folded and stitched to form an oblong cone-like shape. It is painted with natural pigments.

Significance

This is one of only four known gorls in museum collections that are painted with madayin minytji or sacred clan designs. The others are found in the Donald Thomson Collection, the Leonhard Adam Collection at the University of Melbourne, and the Karel Kupka Collection in the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland. The design painted on the surface depicts the story of an ancestral fish trap and of the ancestors who caught, cooked and then ate the fish trapped by the gorl.

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