Maker Unknown

A basket (jawun), north eastern Queensland, c.1932

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Sydney

In her essay, "Working the River: Baskets of the Rainforest", Julie Ewington describes in great detail the construction, material and uses of the jawun. The tough, flexible, hardwearing and water resistant lawyer cane is used to create an extremely versatile basket: 'Jawun are used a sieves for several key purposes. They may be placed in running water over a period of hours or days, so that toxic substances in foodstuffs can be leached out...the baskets may firmly be wedged between sticks or boulders in the rainforest creeks; and they are used for fishing in creeks for shrimp, yabbies and small fish...

When worn collecting and carrying food, the basket was looped by a long handle to the head and lay along the spine, leaving the hands free for gathering – or perhaps for carrying young children. Originally men made jawun and women used them; today both men and women make the baskets...On the forest trail the basket could be hung from its shorter handle from the branch of a tree to keep the contents safe from animals, and at campsites was suspended from the strut of a shelter. As Ernie Grant observed the jawun were also hung at the entrance to a mija – this place directly above the campfire served to smoke-harden the baskets. The very largest baskets were for carrying babies.'

Lindy Allen, Story Place: Indigenous Art of Cape York and the Rainforest, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2003, p.161