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Aboriginal Art Symbols - Honey Ant Site

The Aboriginal art symbol for a honey ant site is a star-shaped network of tunnels leading to the chambers where the honey ants live

Aboriginal Art Symbols - Honey Ant Site

The Aboriginal art symbol for a honey ant site is a star-shaped network of tunnels leading to the chambers where the honey ants live.

  • Honey ants build their nests in the soil beneath a tree or bush and camouflage the entrance with dead leaves. Aboriginal people who collect honey ants from a nest only remove a small proportion of the population for bush tucker and then close up the nest, always aware of their conservation responsibilities and grateful for the gifts of the land.

  • Honey ants are depicted in many Aboriginal paintings that feature bush tucker dreaming stories. The area around Papunya where the Western Desert Art Movement [1] began is known as the Honey Ant Dreaming site.

Some of the topics in our Aboriginal Art pages are illustrated with a painting that was inspired by the theme of that page. The symbols and images used to create them are taken from the sheets above which are freely available as pdf. files for you to download to help with drawing your own artworks.

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