Kwatja, kwatja, kwatja!

In the 1920s and 1930s Australia was enduring severe drought. At Hermannsburg Mission on the banks of the Finke River, water supplies were extremely low; there was little drinking water and even less for the mission gardens which supplied the community with fresh fruit and vegetables. Wells were dug, and water was carted by camel from a spring, Kuprilya, some eight kilometres distant. Water was so restricted that people were dying. A visitor from Melbourne, Una Teague, believed strongly that something must be done to help the situation.

Back in Melbourne she rallied support from fellow artists and from writers. The appeal for funds worked and the necessary money was raised by selling art works and dedicating sales of books to the fund raising. One of those authors who contributed to the fund raising was Jeannie Gunn. As well as signing many sale copies of her book We of the Never Never, an additional copy was signed by the surviving real -life counterparts of her characters. This copy is now part of the State Library's collections. The money raised was used to buy pipes that would carry the water from the spring at Kuprilya to the mission.

The pipes were laboriously transported to Hermannsburg, where the men at the mission dug the trenches and laid the pipes. On 1 October 1935 teh first water flowed through the pipes to the Mission. Their water supply was guaranteed. This day is still celebrated as Kuprilya Day.

The book Kwatja, kwatja, kwatja! : kuprilya kwatja pintja celebrates this memorable event using historic photographs. It is written in Western Arrarnta with an English translation and includes an English translation of the Kuprilya song written by Glen Auricht in 1990.

The Hermannsburg Mission was established in 1877 by the Lutheran missionaries Pastors AH Kempe and WF Schwartz. Lying 130 kilometres west of Alice Springs on the banks of the Finke River, Hermannsburg was the first Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory. Pastor Albrecht arrived in 1926 during the drought which would see the building of the pipeline. The settlement was handed back to the traditional Western Arrarnta owners in 1982, with control of the settlement (now known as Ntaria) passing to a community council.

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