Painted Aboriginal Woomera by Tracker Nat Warano
Pre-papunya painted woomera by Tracker Nat Warano
Object type: Woomera
Locality: Western Desert Australia
Artist: Tracker Nat
Circa: 1950’s
Length: 60 cm
Description: Before Albert Namatjira’s watercolours brought the desert to canvas, Tracker Nat — the revered Central Desert lawman and artist Nat Warano — was already reimagining traditional cultural objects as canvases. This exceptional painted woomera stands as a rare and early example of Aboriginal art transitioning from traditional use to fine art, predating the Papunya Tula movement by decades.
The woomera, traditionally a spear-throwing implement, here becomes a powerful statement of cultural continuity and artistic innovation. Executed in rich natural ochres, pipe clay, and charcoal, the work presents a vibrant central motif representing a sacred site — a powerful concentric design pulsing with ancestral energy. Above, an Aboriginal figure adorned in ceremonial dress is depicted mid-dance, connecting the earthly to the spiritual. Below, a finely dotted desert landscape evokes the red sands animals and trees of Nat’s ancestral country.
These early painted woomeras were often gifted to missionaries, teachers, and visiting dignitaries, making them significant historical artefacts as well as masterful examples of early aboriginal art. Warano’s transformation of the woomera — from weapon to canvas — marks a critical moment in the story of Australian Aboriginal art, and this piece remains a testament to his legacy as both tracker native diplomat and artist.
Price $1200 AUD
TRACKER NAT (NAT WARANO)
Warumungu, born c.1880s – died 1960
Carver, Painter, Diplomat, Lawman
On 5 June 1960, The Sunday Mirror (Darwin) published a brief but telling obituary:
“A tribal painter, said to be more famous than the late Albert Namatjira, has just died at Warrabri Welfare Settlement, near Tennant Creek. He was Nat Warano, of whose skill few white men had heard.”
Known locally and affectionately as Tracker Nat, Nat Warano was a Warumungu elder, police tracker, artist, and cultural leader whose legacy remains deeply embedded in the history of Central Australian Aboriginal art. Born in the 1880s during a time of extreme upheaval for the Warumungu people, Nat’s life was shaped by both the frontier and the Dreaming — straddling the ancient ceremonial world of his ancestors and the shifting colonial reality of 20th-century Australia.
Warano began his working life as a drover in the 1930s before becoming a police tracker, a role that placed him in direct negotiation with settler authorities. Yet it was as a carver and painter that he found a lasting voice — one that continues to speak through the rare and remarkable artefacts he created.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Nat was a prolific maker of painted shields, coolamons, water carriers, and woomeras. His works are instantly recognisable for their detailed depictions of Warumungu ceremonial life — dancers adorned in body paint, hunters with spears and boomerangs, and richly rendered desert scenes filled with flora, fauna, and ancestral symbology. Each piece, painted in ochre, pipe clay, and charcoal, carried not only artistic merit but deep cultural significance.
Nat’s carvings were often gifted to missionaries, teachers, and government officials, extending the Aboriginal concept of ngijinkirri — a sacred practice of reciprocal gifting. This ceremonial exchange was a political act, binding giver and receiver in a network of mutual obligation. As Warumungu elder Donald “Crook Hat” Thompson explained:
“Ngijinkirri is like paying back… when a school teacher gives you knowledge, you owe them. Maybe pay you with a kangaroo, pay you with an emu, but no money.”
In this light, Warano’s painted shields and tools were not merely objects of trade or art — they were bridges. Artefacts that invited settlers into a moral relationship with the land and its First Peoples.
On 5 June 1960, The Sunday Mirror (Darwin) published a brief but telling obituary:
“A tribal painter, said to be more famous than the late Albert Namatjira, has just died at Warrabri Welfare Settlement, near Tennant Creek. He was Nat Warano, of whose skill few white men had heard.”
Photograph: Tracker Nat at the official opening of the Warrabri settlement (now Ali Curung) in 1958, standing beside federal minister Paul Hasluck. Hasluck holds a painted shield gifted by Warano — a public gesture of diplomacy. A second shield, in Western Desert style, is likely the work of Warano’s counterpart, Engineer Jack, a Warlpiri leader. Together, the two men navigated tribal politics, ceremonial leadership, and government negotiations during one of the most tumultuous decades for Aboriginal communities in the region.
Warano’s artistic practice began as early as 1929, with drawings that documented his time on cattle stations — long-horned beasts captured with the keen eye of someone who knew them intimately. Yet despite the scope and refinement of his work, his name was largely forgotten — a victim of the anonymity that so often plagued early Aboriginal artists whose creations were absorbed into museum collections and private homes, disconnected from their authors.
That silence is now being reversed. His shields and woomeras are re-emerging in public and private collections. His visual language — dots, roundels, and fine-line figurative scenes — is now recognised as a precursor to the Central Desert painting movement that would later find global acclaim. Today, his legacy is being revived by his grandson, artist Joseph Yugi Williams, who continues his grandfather’s tradition through a new body of work inspired by Tracker Nat’s artefacts.
Plans are underway for a dedicated exhibition honouring Warano’s life and practice — a long-overdue recognition of a man who used his art not only to depict his world, but to shape it.
Additional information about Warano