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The Bungalow began in 1914, as a tin shed in the small colonial outpost of Alice Springs. It was built initially to house Topsy Smith, of Arabana descent, and her seven children after their Welsh-born father, Bill Smith, had died. Over the years that followed, many more children with Aboriginal mothers and (largely absent) white fathers were brought to live at the Bungalow until, by 1929, when it was relocated out of town, about sixty children were living and growing up there. They were cared for primarily by Topsy Smith as well as the town’s first schoolteacher, Ida Standley. The other central adult figure of this story is Sergeant Stott, who oversaw the establishment and operation of the home. 

Nina’s waters have broken early. She knows it’s a girl. She doesn’t know if she wants it.

Lying in a pool of her own amniotic fluid in Darwin hospital, Nina slowly loses her grip on reality. Alone and paralysed by indecision, she is visited by her best friend who dreams of a different life for her, and an apparition of her mother as a young woman who will do anything to be forgiven. Is Nina too messed up to be a mother? Or is she old enough and ugly enough to see this through? And maybe that thing slithering around in her ultrasound isn’t a baby at all…

Ciella Williams’ Hush balances power, trauma, and unlikely friendships with care and humour. It cuts through our cultural narratives about motherhood, instead diving into the real fears and harsh realities of young women faced with this transformation.

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Ciella is a writer from Darwin/Gulumoerrgin. She is a member of the IGNITE Collective; an initiative of New Ghosts Theatre that creates new work for women aged 20-30. Hush is her first full-length work. It debuted at Flight Path Theatre in Sydney and Brown’s Mart in Darwin in 2022.  Earlier works have been performed at Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), Brown’s Mart, Darwin Fringe Festival and Short + Sweet Sydney. Ciella works as a freelance dramaturg, and ran the NT stream of the ATYP Fresh Ink program for emerging writers from 2018-2021.

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Hush is available for purchase through Playlab Theatre, The Bookshop Darwin (Gulumoerrgin / Darwin) or Red Kangaroo Books, (Mparntwe / Alice Springs).

Long, long ago, we didn’t have donkeys. We didn’t have a lot of the things we have today. We didn’t know donkeys existed. Our people used to walk with their camels and donkeys from Areyonga to Ernabella. They brought their donkeys here, and left them.

Donkeys are malpa wiru, valuable friends and helpers in the families and desert community of Pukatja (Ernabella) in the APY Lands of northern South Australia. People set off on their donkeys for picnics and longer journeys, always returning home safely.

Told in Pitjantjatjara and English and featuring the whimsical, distinctive sculptures that have made Tjanpi Desert Weavers famous, this dual language Australian story offers warm and humorous insights from an Anangu perspective.

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The Pitjantjatjara text is by Tjunkaya Tapaya OAM and Imuna Kenta based on stories by Akitiya Angkuna Tjitayi, Imuna Kenta and Anne Karatjari Ward, and the English translation is by Linda Rive. The artworks featured in Tangki Tjuta – Donkeys are created by seventeen artists of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, a social enterprise of Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council supporting 400+ women to create fibre art across the central and western desert regions of Australia. The artists made these sculptures from minarri, wangunu and intiyanu: desert grasses collected from their Lands. They bound the grass together around wire frames with string, wool or raffia. One of the donkeys was made from buffel grass, which was introduced by Piranpa (white people) and has become a weed. Tjanpi means desert grass in the Western Desert language.

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Tjangki Tjuta – Donkeys is available for purchase from Red Kangaroo Books (Mparntwe/ Alice Springs), The Bookshop Darwin (Gulumoerrgin / Darwin) or through Allen & Unwin Publishers.