merrepen arts festival | the festival

concert | art sale and auction | fi weaving tours | bush tucker

fi weaving tours

The art and culture program will feature the ’Fi Weaving Tours’, a dillybag weaving demonstration and workshop which will be launched at the Festival on Saturday afternoon.

The tour features the local women sharing their culture and knowledge through dillybag weaving workshops. After a power point lecture given by the old ladies in the adults education centre which is a practical replacement for not being able to go bush, visitors can participate in stripping, colouring, rolling and weaving of Merrepen fibres with the old ladies.

This will be followed by a bush tucker tasting of the food that is gathered in the Merrepen fish net such as prawns and little fish (captured beforehand and kept in water) and cooked for people to taste.

Photos: Maria Øien and Stian Thoresen

fi weaving tours
Saturday Afternoon 31 May at 1.00pm and 3.00pm
Sunday Afternoon 1 June at 2.00pm
Duration approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes
Cost $15.00 per person, maximum of 20 people
Please book at the reception desk of the Art Centre with Cassie or Elaine

“We chose to call this tour Fi because this word fits the weaving process. Translated directly it means endless nothingness or emptiness, and the word can also describe how you can create something out of this nothing…the idea of the weaving pattern was given to the old people by the Golden Orb spider’s big web. In my language Ngen giwumirri we call it awurrsyi. It makes big strong nets that catch lots of insects. In the olden days people would see the spider and wonder how he could make this net without hands. Back in the Dreamtime mother earth gave humans their totems, land and language, but also their hands so they could make spears and dilly bags. So people believed that the creation of the spider web was done in a spiritual way. Without hands the spider made the web from a force in its mind. The spider could think his web from nothing into something. In the same way we start weaving with our empty hands and collect from nature to create something out of nothing. That is why we call this weaving presentation Fi.”