Learning for Life
The Y Ballarat Community Impact Report 2024/2025
Birnbial Murrup
(Rainbow Spirit)
Description of the artwork at Lucas Kindergarten (Wadawurrung Country) from Jenna Oldaker
Artwork Name: Birnbial Murrup (Rainbow Spirit)
Artist: Jenna Oldaker – Murrup Art
This artwork is a celebration of our beautiful Wadawurrung Country (Dja), and the connections we share with the community, land, water and sky that surrounds us. The inspiration for this artwork comes from the incredible kindergarten students at Lucas Kindergarten, and the drawings they created based on traditional Wadawurrung symbols in collaboration with Jenna Oldaker (Murrup Art).
The main elements the Kindergarten students recreated during their incursion were – rainbows, meeting place, water, animal tracks, and stars/sun.
Wadawurrung people were once known as the water tribe, due to our harmony with nature and resourcefulness using rivers as both our food and water source. Our coastal country, rivers (yaluk) and wetlands are represented in the artwork by the strip of blue moving through the right-hand side. Underneath are the traditional ‘∩’ shapes representing people in the community on Country together. Underneath are eucalyptus leaves symbolising our land Country and are also symbolic of how we welcome you to Wadawurrung Country – cleansing the land and spirit.
At the bottom is a representation of the marks made into traditional Wadawurrung scar trees, illustrated by the different patterns and shapes. Scar Trees have incredible significance in Wadawurrung culture, as they provide an important link to our past history. The bark from the tree would be cut into a particular shape and removed, to then be used for a variety of different purposes, such as shields, canoes, or shelter. By cutting into the tree to remove the bark, scars would be created, exposing the sapwood on the trunk or branch of the tree.
Flowing through the centre of the artwork are the symbols for meeting place, a place where we can all come together to yarn and share stories. The meeting place symbols are all connected to one another through flowing journey lines – symbolising our connection to not only one another, but also our land Country, water Country, the community, our culture, and our heritage. There are seven meeting place symbols within the artwork, symbolising the seven different Lucas Kindergarten groups at Y Ballarat, as they travel on this journey together. The arrows are symbolic of continuity in the community – how we must continue to look after one another and our land, in order for the land and community to continue to provide and care for us.
On the left-hand side of the artwork is a representation of a rainbow (birnbial), the main element the kindergarten students recreated during their incursion. The colourful rainbow rising high above the land holds the spirits, knowledge and stories of our past and present Elders, whilst below is our homeland. At the top of the artwork are the symbol for ‘stars’, a representation of our Elders and their spirits who live in the sky looking down on us providing guidance, wisdom and strength.
The arches at the bottom of the artwork represent Mount Buninyong and Mount Warrenheip, two local and culturally significant places on Wadawurrung Country. Moving through the artwork are footprints symbolising walking on Country together, helping one another on our individual journeys, and also the symbol for animal tracks, representing our connection to our native Australian animals. The boomerangs flowing through the artwork symbolise our connection to community, and how what we give to one another, and our land and water Country, will always come back to us.
The variety of different colours and shapes are used to illustrate diversity and the celebration of individual expression exhibited by the Lucas Kindergarten students and community.
– Jenna Oldaker, Murrup Art