by Esther Managku as told to Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow for The Lonely Planet Guide to Aboriginal Australia.

First you go into the bush to get that manbelk (pandanus). The best ones have long, long leaves. They can't have (insect) holes in them. They high up, so you get hook stick (inverted fork of a branch) and you bring those leaves down, wrap them in your hand and then pull them out of the tree. Then those leaves are broken (split in sections with the thumb) and the little prickles are taken off. Then you boil him with colour.

There are many colours and they come from many plants. Yellow is from the root of two trees - mandjundum (Pogonobolus reticulatum) and mangukmayin (cheesefruit~ Morinda citrifolia). You dig him up with crowbar and digging stick. Sometimes those roots go straight down. Hard work that one.

We put that colour in a billy can with the pandanus. First of all we make him yellow, that pandanus. And after that we take the ashes from where you make your fire, you can make him turn to red. 1 tell you straight (1 tell you the truth)!

To make green I put dry pandanus in the fire. Then I put those ashes in the billy can and make him little bit green (pale green) in colour. Other colours come from grass roots. Wirdilwirdil (Haemodorurn coccineum) is that small grass. Wirndilk is a bigger grass (Haemodorum spp.) I wash them roots, take the skin off with a knife, then smash the roots with a stone and put it in the billy can. But this one 1 don't put ashes. It turn to pink, light purple, dark purple. If I have lots I can cook it in a drum. February is purple time. We call that time gudiewg (Wet season). But March/April is good too. That time we call banggereng. Those gundalk (grasses) start getting seed then.

Each billy can and each colour separate together (colours are made in separate containers). Then you hang that pandanus out to dry. 1 leave it there in the hot sun. Then you thread him (put a pandanus strand through the eye of a large needle). Then you hold that bunch of pandanus - make him straight. You stitch (blanket stitch) and then you pull them stitches tight. 1 make him bend (fold the sewn pandanus over). I make a hole here tight. Then go (stitch) in same hole. 1 learned this weaving from my teacher when I was in the school. Her country was at Gunbalanya (north-west Arnhem land). She the same skin colour as me. 1 don't know the number how old 1 was when 1 learn, maybe six year old; that's the time I been start, maybe even seven or eight. That's a long time to make baskets - more than 60 years. My mother she didn't know how to make this type of basket, only gundiabarrk (shoulder bag), dierret (string bag), balabala (floor mat), walabi (net for catching fish) and mandlabo (big net for catching fish). They use that medicine tree - mangolk (Cocky Apple-Planchonia careya), and also manbudbud (Brachychiton paradoxum), manwonge and manbonde (banyan - Ficus virens) - all got string.

When we make big mats we sit on them, on the floor. Mrs. Nganjmirra my dada (little sister) she can make them, but she got bad eye now. I now want to teach my other dada, Lawungkurr --- If I feel good I can make basket with handle, or without. Tablemats too. I can make two baskets in one sun. 1 start morning time. By afternoon I finished.