warnanja, ngurrulumuru

Stone tools like these would have taken several days of skilled labour to produce. With the introduction of metal from the late 1800s, stone tools became increasingly rare. By the early 1900s only a few people with the necessary skills and knowledge were left. First, the craftsmen collcted stone from the quarry, usually black stone (diorite) for an axe and quartsize for a pick. The stone was then carefully chipped to roughly the right shape. Next the surface was levelled by tapping, then ground and polished on a grindstone. To make the handle (or haft) a green branch was split and bent around the blade, and bound firmly with string and spinifex resin. Tools had to be treated with care and resharpened by further grinding or flaking. Stone axes were used for a range or everyday tasks - to chop wood for fires or for making other tools, to chop branches so that honey from native bees could be collected, or for butchering. With their long handles, ngurrulumuru (picks) were used in fighting and executions.