Alurrpa Panaga

Alurrpa Pananga also known as Sandhill Bob, (c. 1870 – c. 1940) was an Eastern Arrernte and Wangkangurru man and a leader of his people. Life in the Northern Territory

Pananga was born at Urringa, a water soakage on the Plenty River and his Dreaming was that of the perentie. He was the eldest of six children and, as a child, his family would travel regularly in the extended region and throughout the Simpson Desert. Much of this travel is likely to have been related to the trade of pituri.

In 1904 Pananga also acted as a guide to Walter Smith Purula (then a child) and his uncle who were prospecting for gold on the Hale River. In 1910, again alongside Smith, he was a participant in the Arrernte peoples last large ceremonial gathering, a corroboree, in the Simpson Desert. It was the last of these at this site.

Many Aboriginal people in Central Australia died in the 1919 - 1920 Spanish flu epidemic but Pananga and his wife (unnamed) remained healthy and, the loss of so many people, including the younger generation, caused great concern to the then elders of the community. In 1929 they determined they would teach as much as they could to Walter Smith Purula and Pananga acted as his guide.

Pananga travelled with Smith in the winter of 1929 and guided him across sandhills and visited cultural sites with him and taught him important songs. In describing Pananga Smith said to Dick Kimber:

A side effort of their travel was to locate gold or copper that would enable their people to become independent and, in this, they were unsuccessful.

As he aged Pananga, remained nomadic although, as he aged, he was obliged to stay on more well defined paths. He and his wife died in about 1940 during a period of intense heat. Historian Dick Kimber believed that Pananga's death marked the end of an era and that: