Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01712:body:0:p9
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01712
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 22205–24937

up to 300 g. Males are bigger than females and have a larger, wider head. Tails are often shortened due to damage during fights or predation attempts but intact tails are slightly longer than the head-body length, and become swollen at the base in good seasons when fat is stored. The colour of Tjakura range from bright orange to a dull brown or even grey. The belly ranges from bright yellow to cream or grey. The Martu name Mulyamiji means Red Nose.

  Photograph 3. Kiwirrkurra Elder Walimpirri Tjapaltjari holding a tjulyulka (night skink) and a Tjalapa (Pintupi word for Great Desert Skink) to show the difference in size between the two closely related species.

  Source: Kiwirrkurra IPA

  Photograph 4. A Tjakura at the entrance to its burrow
  Source: Nicolas Rakatopare, Yulara, 2021.

 Cultural Significance
 Tjakura is a special animal for Aboriginal people across the desert who continue to celebrate it in art, dance and song. It used to be an important source of meat for Aboriginal people, and is part of the creation story with its own Tjukurrpa sites and ceremonies.

 The Kiwirrkurra women have a song about Tjalapa and blue-tongue. The story is about the mother blue-tongue fighting with mother Tjalapa because she is jealous that the tjalapa's babies have pretty little pink noses and fair skin but her babies have big black heads (Yukultji Napangati, personal communication, 2018).

 To perform this song the Kiwirrkurra women paint their bodies to dance, using paint made from the Tjalapa's kuna (scats, or faecal pellets). The black part of the scat makes black paint to depict the blue-tongue and the white uric acid on the Tjalapa kuna makes the white paint for the light-skinned Tjalapa.

 In the APY Lands there is a Tjakura Tjukurrpa site on the Watarru IPA called Aralya where an army of snake-men came down from Uluru and murdered the ancestral Tjakura - Wati Tjakura with spears (Ninuku Arts 2019). He tried to escape but was killed and his family came to grieve and bury him. It was in the vicinity of the Tjakura Tjukurrpa site that senior Anangu women Mary Pan and Iluwanti Ken rediscovered Tjakura (previously thought to be extinct in South Australia) in 1998 (Daniel, 1999). In 2015 Josephine Mick and Tjulkiwa Atira organised an intergenerational camp at Watarru to revisit the Tjakura colonies and revitalise its traditional story through art. A giant figure of a Tjakura was created from tjanpi (spinifex) (Photograph 4). In 2019, Kiwirrkurra Ranger, John Tjupurrula West, created a magnificent painting of Tjalapa signifying the cultural significance of the lizard to his people (Photograph 5).

"Warrarna is really special to us because it's got Tjukurrpa. The early days they used to eat