| This is what Denise's Yabok, or older sister, says one day in
November, 1999: We
get pandanus by hook stick (inverted branch) and we press it to take thorns off (press it
between the fingers). We boil them with the dye, colour, yellow, red, green,
sometime white, sometime black, purple, sometime pink. 'Mandurmdum' we call that
tree for yellow dye (Pogonolobus reticulatus, a member of the family Rubiaceae);
we making green from pandanus. We burn the dry pandanus and get ashes and I put it
in the billy can and it turns to green. Other ladies they smash the green pandanus and
boil it up for green dye. Purple we can get out of the grass seed (gundalk)
. I take the red roots, smash it and put it in the billy can. I mix it up with
pandanus (strips) and then let it dry after. I wash him clean and hang in the trees
to get him dry. Next day we make basket now, We mix all different colour. Our mother
taught us, and that string bag our grandmother and our mother teach us. Our sister
Miriam she can do that big floor mat, she can do that. When our eyes getting clear
we can do that (both my sisters have glaucoma)."
Denise says that Esther is the senior custodian of Baby Dreaming. If women
want to become pregnant it is she who intercedes with the Baby Spirits. She
sometimes sees their tiny footprints around the sacred waterholes.
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