Charlie Numbulmoore was a senior eastern Ngarinyin (Wurla) cave-painter and artist that resided for many years at Gibb River Station in the central Kimberley until his death in 1971. Recounts of Numbulmoore’s retouching of Kimberley cave paintings have been documented by the anthropologist Ian Crawford, who worked closely with the artist during the 1960s.

Crawford witnessed Numbulmoore’s repainting of a Wanjina image in Mamadai cave on Karunjie station, north-east of the Gibb River Station (Ian Crawford, 1968: pp.25-27). It was here, at Karunjie during 1970 that the South Australian cattleman, author and avid artefact collector Tom McCourt first documented sightings of the ‘Devil-Devil’ imagery, thirty miles west of the homestead at Karunjie (McCourt, 1975, p.48).

McCourt met Numbulmoore when he visited the Central Kimberley in 1970 whilst studying and collecting artefacts. He recounted that, [Numbulmoore was] "the last of the old people here [Gibb River Station]...he has a certain something that impresses you...When I was at Charlie's camp I bought the paintings he had in his hut...Although the work was childlike it has the primitive look of paintings seen under rock overhangs out in the bush some of which he has painted and touched up in the past" (Ibid., p.53). One of the paintings McCourt refers to purchasing is likely to be Devil Devil, 1970. In his book Aboriginal Artefacts McCourt lists the subject matter of all his acquisitions from Numbulmoore including, ‘”devil-devil”’ painted on cardboard in ‘brown and black, with claws on it’s fingers’ (Ibid., p.53).

The late anthropologist Kim Akerman has purported that the figure of ‘Devil-Devil’, sighted in the caves near Karunjie and later depicted by Numbulmoore is likely to ‘represent Arkula or the Spirit Woman Jilinya, a malevolent spirit in the North Kimberley’ (Personal correspondence, Sotheby’s, July 2001, lot 7). He suggest ‘that the ears usually indicate a spirit figure and the talons the nature of the beast’ and ‘...it is interesting to note that the figure has black eyes encircled with eyelashes and a black oval on the breast bone that characterises the artist's representations of Wanjina’ (Ibid., lot 7).

Tom McCourt, Aboriginal Artefacts, Australia, Rigby, 1975, pp. 47-53;
Ian M. Crawford, The Art of the Wandjina. Aboriginal Cave Paintings in the Kimberley, Western Australia, London: Oxford University Press, 1968
Judith Ryan with Kim L. Akerman (eds.), Images of Power. Aboriginal Art from the Kimberley, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1993.

Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, July 2001, lot 7

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