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1. |
The Imagined Artist
03:21
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David Milner said, ‘If you return to England you will simply become yet another Australian artist painting European pictures.’
That, at least, was some reason for going to the Centre.
‘See some of Australia other than the capital cities,’ he said.
So I am influenced by what people say to me! This journal is made up of people who said things to me, names of people just remembered.
I've never attempted to write this down before. After all, I painted and made drawings, and I had no literary skills but for the odd letter written in desperation, with the feeling that comes from neglecting to write to people. Even now this is writing, in a very casual way, just to turn over the memories and to find out why I never did become the sort of artist I had imagined I would like to be.
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2. |
The Painted Land
03:49
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Old stones of ancient memory hold the sleeping secrets of forgotten Gods and grasp the colour of the sun and light the day with wonder.
In the painted land, the distance between the present and the past, is not a measure of time.
To see a place as if for the first time with eyes unencumbered with preconceived ideas
The land rises in convoluted forms, rich, red and ochre-coloured, sprinkled with pale golden spinifex, sighing in the hot summer breeze. The air is scented with the memory of days more than man could ever know, this is the land that stirs the imagination and wakes the spirit of adventure in the heart of young and old.
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3. |
Preparing For The Trip
01:50
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I think it was Dave's idea to travel by motorbike and sidecar. I'm not sure, but that's the way I travelled. At least it cured me of ever wanting to ride a motorcycle again. It was early in 1954; I set about equipping myself for the trip. At the time, I was working for ConPress in Sydney, doing colour separations for the Women’s Weekly, and feeling a bit of a failure as a painter after my time in London. There, at least, I had the illusion of being an artist of the future. But in Sydney, surrounded by the products of the ‘Charm School’, I felt lost. The influences of Picasso and Gerard Dillon, my Irish friend, seemed far away, and the purposes of art a bit unreal, so David’s advice to see Australia, fell on impressionable ears. I bought a bike and sidecar, which had belonged to a Methodist minister. A 'Beeza' B.S.A. 500 that I called ‘Effie’ after its number plate: EF 663. The sidecar was a large wooden box - home made - that I later converted to a more useful container.
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4. |
Motor Bike Riding
03:36
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Motorbike riding is like nothing else, perhaps riding a horse at a mad gallop, or flying a small plane, very exhilarating! There's a sense of danger and freedom, the sort of thing that makes people take risks they wouldn't normally dream of. That could explain it as a mode of travel, unlike the car which tends to be more prosaic and staid, and lacking the sense of adventure. Of course it was much cheaper, too, and the road accident rate hadn't reached the proportions in 1954, which later put people off bikes. [I] sometimes wonder about that. I mean the choice of medium that gives the sense of adventure. Like looking for yet another kind of pen or pencil to draw with - or paints, or something.
I left Sydney in rather a casual way, with all my few possessions in the side-box, feeling that Australia lay before me and I rode first down to Melbourne. Being so excited about my newfound freedom, I didn't bother to sleep but simply rode continuously, stopping only to eat and refuel at all-night truck stops. I remember ham and eggs at Gundagai, and an aching back that took a week to disappear.
In Melbourne at my parents’ home, I set about preparing properly for the trip. I rebuilt the sidecar, replacing the frame with one of Dustings’ ('The best frames in the business!') made by Sampson Brothers of Hartwell, who also advised me on the care of the bike.
I forgot to mention someone whose name I don’t remember. He was a bike enthusiast, who helped me select the bike in Sydney, and then instructed me in the mysteries of its motor. I learned how to dismantle, repair, and do all sorts of things that bike buffs do to make them perform at their peak. This was invaluable to me, not only in the months ahead, but to this day, for the ins and outs of the motor, hold no fears for me. I remember his face, his family, his home, but not his name.
The box was made with a hinged lid, sealed against dust, and held water can, petrol cans, tools, spares, tucker and bed roll, a .22 rifle and field glasses loaned by my brother-in-law. The RACV supplied me with maps of the route, and I purchased a survey map of the Northern Territory.
My parents were a bit puzzled by my activity, and I think it somewhat astounded them, when one grey, dull, overcast morning in July, I announced that I was off and I headed towards Adelaide. I remember rain in Ballarat and fog in Nhill. I stayed a week in Adelaide with Mrs. Dev, my brother-in-law’s mother, who was just as puzzled by this odd young fellow, riding a bike off to the Northern Territory.
In Adelaide I purchased a hat with a wide brim, biscuits and oranges - can’t remember anything else!
I said my farewells and headed for the Flinders Ranges.
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5. |
Warmth of The Sun
03:19
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Riding with a poet’s soul under the warmth of the sun
Riding with a poet’s soul under the warmth of the sun
And now with my new found freedom, I can make Port Augusta by dawn
Riding with a poet’s soul under the warmth of the sun
Watching how the rabbits run under the warmth of the sun
Perhaps it is here I'll find that old, old stone, sought by philosophers minds from time memory past
The Sun is falling fast and hot, amongst the sand and grass, turning over the past, warming the coloured pebbles of the Gibber Plain’s overwhelming richness
Riding with a poet’s soul under the warmth of the sun
Riding with a poet’s soul under the warmth of the sun
And now with my new found freedom, I can sleep by the side of the road
And now with his new found freedom, he can sleep by the side of the road
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6. |
The Restricted Area
02:20
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All I wanted was the warmth of the sun! on through the Pitchi Richi Pass to Port Augusta, where I replaced a front wheel brake lining, and went out to Quorn, where I bedded down for the night in the cattle yard’s bull ring. Before settling down I wandered into the local pub, where I got into conversation with a couple of timber cutters, who were logging up in the Flinders Ranges -a place called Crystal.
When I arose in the morning amongst the smells of cattle and smoke from the ‘Ghan ( my first sight of the train to the Alice) for some reason or other, I headed off up into the Flinders Ranges. After a few hours I realised I was doing something I hadn’t counted on. It was partly the fact that Dave Milner had taken some wonderful photographs of the ranges, which had been published in Walkabout pre-war and which I had admired. The name Crystal had interested me too, and the country was without exaggeration, magnificent! But I stopped, turned round, and went back to Quorn, where I lunched and toyed with the idea of putting the bike and sidecar on the train, for I'd seen the flat rail trucks being loaded with cars.
After eating, my resolve to strike out north was restored, and I headed for Kingoonya.
Up to this time, of course, there'd been roads - bitumen, or if not surfaced, at least reasonably graded ones, but suddenly there was a deterioration, especially after Woomera. A large sign announced, 'Restricted Area' and freedom departed! It was not long since the war and signs of restrictions became second nature to people in wartime. But in this huge continent where I felt so free, there was this sign and a road shooting away to the horizon, into the restricted area. Maybe there was a war at the end of that road!
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7. |
Sand Dune Rise
04:10
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I turned off the graded road and onto the track that led north-east to Kingoonya. I was so intent on looking at what on first sight is an inland sea, that I ran smack into a sand dune rise and a sand drift. Now once I struck these bright orange, red, and very soft dunes, I worked out a technique to keep going, with the sidecar doing all sorts of crazy things to the steering, as it dragged through the sand. But it took constant watching. One look away at that expanse of water, and I was bogged! It took me two hours the first time, and three hours the next to extricate myself. From then on I was a bit more wary of the sand.
Kingoonya was a pub, railway huts, and a water tower. Paddy Belamy told me later that she used to climb to the top of the tower when she was a little girl, look out over the country, and dream of the day she would leave it. She did, but she came back, perhaps not to Kingoonya but to the Alice. Maybe George Brown is right, once you have it in your blood, you can’t get away.
As I said to begin with, this is mainly about people, names of people remembered and some without names: the two young German carpenters on their way north in a Holden Ute; the shifty-looking character who approached me in the pub to give him a lift north to Coober Pedy.
I camped by the railroad track and was awakened in the night by the noise of a train on its way to the west. Next morning I was on my way again, the German carpenters keeping pace with me for a few miles in their Holden. I think they thought I was mad, and couldn’t possibly make it. They left me and sped past me on a flat gibber plain, well south of Coober Pedy, and were surprised, I think, to see me a few hours later, when I stopped in front of the General Store of that, then, almost deserted opal field.
They were the only travellers I met all the way. The only other people I saw, were the chap at Kulgera who sold me petrol; a couple of Northern Territory policemen in a jeep just south of the Alice; and Jock? manager of one of the stock agents in Alice Springs - oh! and an Aboriginal who helped me across the Finke [river] somewhere near Henbury. The Aboriginal, the first Territory man I met, was ragged and barefoot who held out his hat into which I put tea and sugar. Shades of the past!
I had reached the side of the Finke, a dry bed of sand and rocks and had with caution learned from experience, walked ahead to see how I would manage to cross it without any damage, when I saw a figure of a man further down the river bed, in the middle of nowhere as it seemed. It was quite a surprise, really. As I drew nearer I could see it was my ragged Aboriginal.
We looked at each other at a distance and then he sat down, and watched me, as I started unloading the sidecar, carrying the various cans and heavy objects over to the opposite bank, my normal procedure. After a couple of trips across he came over and helped me. The only time I felt a little uneasy, was when he picked up the rifle and carried that carefully across, and laid it with my other possessions. As it was unloaded it was not a real concern, but being familiar with the idea that Aboriginals should not like white people (very much), made me wonder.
On closer inspection I realised he was or appeared to me, not particularly strong, very thin and needing a good feed. So I offered him a couple of cans of food. At this he conveyed that was not what he wanted. He probably spoke better English than I can speak his language, but to my untrained ear it was a series of mumbled sounds that I eventually understood as tea and sugar - our gifts to civilisation! With these he seemed satisfied, and continued on his way down the creek bed to where, I do not know, or from where. I do not know. After all it was his country. He knew where he was.
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8. |
Discovery of The Land
03:28
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Discovery of the land, sun scorched sand
If I seem to rave I can convey but little of its richness
I am surrounded by things I have some real feelings for; It's going to take quite a while
Discovery of the land, sun scorched sand
Like being in Love, trees are different here, you can see them clearly. Mulga’s have a shape; ironwoods are real hams looking sad all over the place
Lucky to be amongst this rich country, I know that if I can just hold a little of its magic I will have achieved something worthwhile
The days are clear with rising hills to outcrops of rich, red rock.
The days are clear and warm and every now and then there's a poet's flash of colour and the sky rains with pink and grey-violet birds or a thousand little spots of yellow.
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9. |
Five Days From Kingoonya
03:40
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The encounter with the police was more explicit. They looked at my outfit, and me, asked if I had water, filled my water bag, said they’d see me in the Alice.
Jock whatever his name was, on the other hand, was a different proposition. We came head to head on a narrow part of the road. He said he was just going down the track to have a look at a pump on one of the tanks and would see me on the way back. A couple of hours later he caught up to me again. I would have been about 30 miles from Alice Springs at this stage. My bike was missing badly on one cylinder, and I was not very happy with it. After a few miles with the Ute at my back, I pulled over and let Jock pass. He pulled up and asked how I was going. He must have observed that I looked a bit tired of it all. After all, it had been four days from Kingoonya, not all easy going. So he took out a bottle of Johnny Walker, and we sat and listened to his radio, a powerful 2-way job. Then he left me some smokes, and said he’d see me in the Alice. Before it got dark I had a can of beans, stripped the bike and the next morning I was up at dawn and assembled the bike. I was on the bitumen and through Heavitree Gap, and into the Alice by 10 o’ clock.
It had taken me five days from Kingoonya.
There are many things about the trip that I now look back on, small mechanical accidents, a branch flipping up into the chain, jumping it off the gears; fractured oil line with hot oil pumping over the cylinder head; the sidecar suspension breaking, and finally the general wear and tear of the motor that meant it being almost completely rebuilt. Not a great list of dramas, but enough to learn how to cope.
And then there was the discovery of the land - of sleeping under the stars in the clear night, the icicles on the tarp, where the breath condensed and froze in the night; seeing dawn and dusk at the beginning and the end of day; being amused that rear-vision mirrors seemed redundant in a place where there was only one track forward and one back.
Alice Springs in 1954 was not very large. The east side was only just beginning to be built, and it was there that Alan Hayes and his wife Trudy, lived in very restricted circumstances, with their three children. They made a bed for me on the verandah, after my unexpected arrival. Alan had worked for my father in the building trade as a plasterer, and it was as a contract plasterer that he made his livelihood in the Alice. He'd met his wife Trudy during the war, in Darwin. Her maiden name was Johannsen, and Alice Springs was her home town.
My original intention was to continue on up the bitumen to Darwin, then after the wet, go across and down through Mt Isa and onward to the coast. However, things changed! Anyway I really didn't have a firm plan on what I was doing. My bike needed repairs, so the motor was sent down south. While I was waiting around I was at a bit of a loose end. Fate played a hand and my friend Alan got crook with the 'flu or something, so having nothing much to do, I decided I'd finish off the job of plastering he was doing. That was how I spent two years in Alice Springs!
I became known around the town as Alan Hayes’ offsider, and never bothered to mention that I was actually more interested in painting and drawing than in local building. In some ways that was a good thing. It saved me having to explain myself, and as my approach to painting was not exactly that of a ‘Sunday painter’, it was in reality what I was!
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10. |
Sunday Painter!
05:00
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A song is a song, and a card is a memory
I realize that I’m not the sought of painter who follows the usual patterns
Here one time, an old rainbow grew tired and lay down to rest, marking the earth with its magic colours, and every day the sun lights them up making all the ground a crock-o-gold.
I paint and draw and I have at last struck my Eldorado
A song is a song, and a card is a memory
How much a bloke has to depend on himself and his own ways and how little on clichés You've got to draw straight from the guts or lose the lot in common mannerisms....
Every morning there's a new magpie orchestra with a new version of the old breakfast song and it seems as though it's just for me.
You can't be intellectual about some place as big as this, I can't make up anything complex to explain it. It's only the pink little things that need explanations...'
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11. |
University of The World
03:30
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At various times in my life I have attempted to be what was always called a full-time painter. I suppose this means that you earn your living at painting pictures, and I'm not much good at it! I cannot simply paint pictures as a kind of production line, and that’s that. To me, painting has become a tool to think with, to formulate ideas, and this is not always acceptable to people who wish art to be recognisable either as object, style, or manner.
[My visit to] Central Australia was a first attempt to realise my own perception of place without reference to some past method or stylisation. Admittedly the mannerisms which I had learnt through the study of art, European and otherwise, still continued to dominate my personal idiom; and it took time and practice to produce one or two pictures that seemed to me a little more than just a transposition of visual experience. I continue to draw on the notes of these two years and still gain a lot of pleasure in discovering new elements in them to use again.
Alan and I worked well together, and I experienced the satisfaction of hard physical work. My father had worked hard physically all of his working life in the trade, and I suppose this added to the satisfaction that I could also do the work that he had done, in spite of the fact that I never actually learned to use the hawk and trowel other than by observation. We did private houses and public buildings. The first war-service dwelling in Alice Springs was built by Alan for Mr Philip Rice, the town’s solicitor. A new kindergarten was being built by Mr Sweet and his son. We assisted with the plastering, and donated our services for a large sand pit for the kids. (I remembered that years later, when I built a sand pit for my own little ones.) The Flynn Memorial church was being built at this time by Jim Richards, and we were working on it at the time he fell to his death from the scaffolding in the interior. A sobering experience to witness how easy it is to be the victim of an accident.
On Saturdays the ‘Ghan would arrive, and we would go up to the store and get fresh vegetables and all the other wonders of civilisation such as newspapers.
Towards the end of '54, I was becoming well acclimatised to heat and hard work. Occasionally I'd go and have a few beers at the Stuart Arms and observe the many characters that made the Alice Springs community what it was. I think in retrospect, everyone was a character! Bob Buck was an historical character in his own right: ‘The man who searched for Lasseter'. In fact there's a place called 'Bob Buck's' these days. A part of the local legend, he was often to be seen with Alan Watchaup, the local newspaper writer, who christened the large tree in front of the Stuart Arms, ‘the tree of knowledge’. Alan wrote a regular page on the Northern Territory, in a magazine published by the Melbourne Argus.. And then there were my own friends: Alan’s brother-in-law Joe Mengel, professional ’roo shooter and stockman; his brother-in-law, Martin, who ran a drilling rig, a thoughtful man; and Bill their father, with all of the Mt Swan Station; Kurt Johannsen, Trudy's brother, who ran a copper show somewhere up towards the Granites. He could run and repair anything from an aero plane to a drilling rig: geologist, mineralogist and whatever else was necessary to survive in the Centre, a graduate as they all were, of this great university of the world itself.
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12. |
Weeks Are Flying By!
01:04
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The weeks are flying by and I can hardly keep pace with them, but I'm getting some good pictures. I reckon I have a winner for the Dunlop next year, and a really different sort of religious picture for the Blake. I think I'm doing something with paint that hasn't been done before. Apart from all that, I'm still working with Alan (Hayes) - we have almost completed the kindergarten, quite a big building with a big main floor of about l500 square feet. I am not doing too bad with the trowel and float, considering my lack of experience. Alan has work lined up for weeks ahead and is continually knocking back work. It's very hard work though, specially flooring. I was wheeling and tipping the barrow and it's toughening me up. The days are warm and sunny now after last week's rain and the new growth of green looks a picture. ... Looks as if I'll be here a little while yet. Many thanks for fixing up my clothes, Mum. I'll try to finish a film this week-end and get it processed, so you can see what the place looks like....
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13. |
The Stuart Arms
04:13
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I had made friends with a chap named Ted Smith, son of Broncho Smith, a well-known identity of the Territory. Ted liked to think of himself as a pretty hard man, a man of the Territory. He was, in the vernacular, a beaut bloke. One Saturday morning at the Stuart Arms, Ted came in after delivering a load of gravel, sand or something. Ted had the local sand and gravel business, and did a bit of bush carting to fill out. He was an enterprising character, who had bought a front-end loader to shovel sand when his partner Dunn had left to go south.
When he came in, the subject of the conversation was Miss Olive Pink, a most unlikely name for a most unlikely character, but very much a fact. Miss Pink was of the Daisy Bates generation, or something akin to it. She was, I think, a spinster born in New Zealand, with what could be described as a pommy accent, more English than the English. She wore white pleated skirts, white blouse, white stockings and shoes, and carried a white parasol. She was a person out of a past century, to be seen to be believed. She had about her the air of gentility, slightly faded by time, but determined to preserve it at all costs. She was an anthropologist! and to make ends meet she was caretaker and cleaning lady for the local court house. Olive Pink, or should I say Miss Pink, lived in an ex-army Nissen hut beside the fire station. Now the fire station was manned by local lads all fond of their drink, and inclined to regular and rather rowdy indulgences, much to Miss Pink’s annoyance. Wherever possible she would protest in the local newspaper at the goings on at the fire station. One evening, however, she overstepped the mark and vented her annoyance directly at the offending locals, whereupon they served her with an eviction order. The Nissen hut, as it happened, belonged to the fire station, so Miss Pink had to leave or by her own story, 'volunteered' to leave, and she would live in a tent, pitched in the local magistrate’s backyard, until suitable accommodation could be obtained.
Now the conversation when Ted entered was who would shift Miss Pink? After listening to the various opinions that were expressed of the lady, none of them very flattering, Ted said, ‘You’re a pack of mangy bastards. I’ll shift the poor old bugger!', ‘Good on you, Ted.’ I said, ‘And I’ll give you a hand.' I don’t think my motives were as kindly as Ted’s. I was curious - and I would not have missed it for the world.
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14. |
Beautiful Unique
07:22
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Miss Olive Pink
With garments that are warn regardless of the times
Your fate was not forlorn, I can read about you on line
The passions you pursued are richer for your contribution
And now who has the last laugh?
And now who makes the slight remark?
And now who has the time to read about you on line? I do.
With love lost in Gallipoli, a cost no one else can see
Standing up for what you feel is right
And never giving up the fight
You were a beautiful unique, Miss Olive Pink (Repeat)
That afternoon we arrived at the Nissen hut, where the lady met us with great dignity and presence.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen!’, and went on to instruct us which boxes she would require and which to store. One box was a rather large-sized wooden crate with rope handles.
'This should be very light', she said with a smile. ‘It only contains my papers.'
Needless to say it was the heaviest item of the lot!
She had many other crates, containing her collection of Australian ethnological objects made over the years, and collected from her Aboriginal friends. I wonder what eventually became of them.
In the centre of the room was a small box, over which she'd draped a lace cloth. A vase of wild grass, a bottle and two glasses stood on it. With much ceremony she invited us to partake of a little refreshment.
'A glass of sherry perhaps? I do not partake myself, but I’m sure you gentlemen may.’
(It was about 103°F to 110°F in that Nissen hut and the thought of sherry was not very appealing.)
‘Or perhaps a cup of coffee?’
With alacrity we both agreed. She duly appeared with a jug of coffee and two cups.
‘I have added a little salt to offset the heat, you know.’
We both sipped the coffee gingerly. It was not a pinch of salt, it was very briny! Fortunately she did not stay to see us enjoy our coffee, so we quickly disposed of it through the open window. To this day I do not know whether she was laughing at us.
She was an intelligent, if eccentric woman, and the pathos of that doily and vase of grass will stay in my memory forever.
We duly shifted Miss Pink with all her requisites, camp oven (circa 1890 perhaps) and tent to the magistrate’s backyard. Neither Ted nor I discussed it with anyone after. After all, who was interested? Not everyone can be a Daisy Bates.
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15. |
A Few Choice Words
03:11
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One Friday night at the Stuart Arms Ted Smith said to me, ‘Like to take a run out bush?’
I said, ‘OK,’ and we left early the next morning. The Ford was loaded up with the front-end loader and some other gear, and the trailer with cement. The idea was that we were taking the cement out to a property near Mt Zeil to a place called Raggart’s Well, owned by a chap named Bowman. The front-end loader was to bring back loads of sand to the place where they were going to make cement bricks to construct houses for the Aboriginals camped in that area, Pitjantjatjara people. The contract had been let to an Italian builder. These houses were like shelter sheds, especially designed for Aboriginal people by the Department of Native Affairs.
We turned off the bitumen shortly after sun-up, and headed north west along the base of the MacDonnell Ranges towards Hamilton Downs Station. The day was perfect and we trundled along comfortably, easing our way over creek beds and up and down the gentle slopes of the ranges below the MacDonnells.
We had been travelling about two hours I'd think, when I glanced back to see the last of about thirty lengths of re-enforcing rod we had on the trailer, slide off into the dust! With a few well-chosen words, we disconnected the trailer and turned back. I picked up, and Ted drove.
Nearly another four hours later, we were back at the trailer and on our way again. We came to an open stretch where the road ran parallel to the mountains. In the distance we could see the dust of an approaching truck. Turned out to be a chap named Brummell, nicknamed 'Beau,', naturally, who also did bush carting.
As we'd stopped we decided to eat and have a cuppa, so I walked back to check the duals [tyres] just as a matter of course - put your hand up between them to see they were not overheating. At the rear of the truck I could hear the outer tyre losing air. A few more choice words of advice to anyone who was listening, and we proceeded to change the wheel. Ted had a block spanner welded to a piece of pipe. When I put my weight on it the pipe split up the middle. All the choice language in the world would not have compensated!
Fortunately, Beau had a spanner that'd fit both his truck and ours, someone had been listening!
We arrived at Raggart’s Well at just past midnight, a blaze of stars - no moon - we were exhausted. As the last few hours of the drive were in the dark, t'was not the easiest of tracks. We unrolled our swags under the truck and were soon fast asleep. A few hours later I awoke to hear the galloping feet of brumbies as they came into water at the well. Then at dawn, the noisiest of dawns, with birds and animals of all shapes and sizes all waiting for water that was not there - camels, donkeys, goats, sheep, horses, steers, you name it, they were all there, a great mob of them, who jerked away in fright as we approached.
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16. |
The Brumbies
04:39
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Surrounded by the big world, lost in translation
River like a bloodstream, sparkling my dull eyes
Mirage like an ocean in the sand
Stranded in the big world, perish in an instant
Catch a glimpse of summer, on the northern blow
Something on my blind side, couldn't see it coming
At the waters edge - surprise!
The most sacred thing to hold a gun
Shoot before you think, this can't be undone.
And the Brumbies shelter, in a secondhand memory
They stay with me too this day.
And my heart beats faster, like I'm running with the heard
The gun is left behind again.
The most sacred thing to hold a harness
Don't be blinded by this pitiful search
Surrounded by a vast land, a painted memory
Colours of an old sky, slipping toward darkness
In and out of time, binding me with harness
Held between my soft hands.
And the Brumbies shelter, in a secondhand memory
They stay with me till the end.
And my heart beats faster, like I'm running with the heard
The gun is left behind again.
(words by Euie B Graham 2017)
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17. |
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We looked into the rough shed that housed a diesel pump that had come out of the ark. A native stockman arrived as we were making our breakfast, and tried unsuccessfully to start the pump.
‘Bluddy well’s forked,’ was his comment and departed.
As our water was running low, I lowered a billy down on a rope and filled the water bag. It was not the greatest water I've ever tasted, but you could drink it at a pinch or make tea with it. The homestead, if you could call it that, stood on a rise of land above the river. The setting was most spectacular: Mt Zeil in the west, and later, when I climbed the rocky slopes at the back of the rise, I could see Haasts’ Bluff, a blue mass rising in the distance, and the coloured land that was the Ormiston Gorge, stretching towards Hermannsburg. The homestead was a white-ant eaten wreck, half-collapsed toward the rear, that housed an ancient pedal radio, stove, and rickety chairs and table. Somewhere in the back, I could hear the giggles of Aboriginal Women as they peeped through the cracks in the walls at these strangers. We had unloaded the cement from the trailer, with the help of the local people - Pitjanjatjaras, rather tall skinny people with runny noses, and sand-reddened eyes that did little to enhance their rather villainous appearance. Quite different from the Aranda people, who are fat and jolly generally, or the Luritja who always seem to be more on the ‘intellectual’ side. We'd unloaded the cement and stored it in a rather ugly-looking, new aluminium dwelling that had been built to replace the homestead, I think. Anyway it was a stark, ugly intrusion on such a beautiful place! Bowman arrived while the cement was being unloaded, and invited us in for a mug of tea which was duly served in an assortment of cracked, old enamel mugs and jam tins, a not very pleasant mix of strong tea, with blobs of powdered milk floating on the surface.
I noticed Ted grabbed the least offensive container before I could get it. He remarked later,
‘How the 'ell did you drink out'a that mug?’
Bowman was a strange man with an odd history that I'll not repeat as it was told to me on hearsay. Enough said that he was obsessed with cattle and the outback, and obviously a bit peculiar by everyday standards. Amongst a bunch of old rifles that stood in the corner of the partly-collapsed room, I noticed one that had ‘E. Giles’ engraved on the stock. I would have liked to have asked him for it, rusty old relic that it was, but lacked the courage.
After our tea break Bowman departed in his jeep and we took the truck down to the riverbed, where we unloaded the front-end loader and proceeded to fill the truck with fine white sand. I stood on the top and leveled with the shovel as Ted loaded. 'Twas pretty hot. The first load up, Ted started the truck, reversed the motor and eased into gear. There was a sharp crack from the rear axle, as it sheared off at the flange! I'd thought that Ted had run out of oaths at our last misfortune, but I was mistaken! The air was rich with phrases that I'd never imagined as the truck was called every name he could put his tongue to! That ceremony concluded, we set about repairing the damage. I had visions of all sorts of extreme measures, but it was all figments of my imagination. Ted produced a new axle from somewhere in the rear of the truck, and we proceeded with the tricky task of hooking out the broken axle from the splines. It took a while and a good deal of dirty, sweaty labour, but it was accomplished and the new axle fitted.
The first load of sand dumped in the spot required, we continued to work, me leveling - Ted on the tractor. It was very hot! It didn’t pay to touch any exposed metal. After about the third load I happened to look at Ted. He'd stopped the tractor and was sitting looking a bit peculiar. His normal colour was dark brown. He was a very dark bloke - black hair. He'd turned a kind of grey, putty colour and he looked awful. I had never seen sunstroke before. The reflection of the sun off the creek bed was intense, and affected him badly. He went over and sat in the shade of the trees that lined the bank, and I got the water bag, wet a cloth, and put in on his head. We had some oranges in the cab of the truck. I gave him a couple of these to suck.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I’ve never felt like this before.’
The water bag was running a bit low, and I was feeling concerned about Ted, with visions of having to driving him 200 odd miles back to Alice, with him crook and only that lousy well water!
I'd seen some of the Aboriginal women digging up the riverbed a little way, earlier in the day, so I wandered up where I'd seen them. They'd made a large pit in the river bed about fourteen feet across, with sloping sides that must have been about ten feet deep. At the bottom was half a 44-gallon drum sunk in the sand, full of clear sparkling water. I climbed down and drank my fill of sweet water, sparkling with little flecks of mica. I went back - got the water bag - and filled it up. As I poured the water over Ted, you could almost see him change colour! whether it was the orange juice or the water I dunno, but in about half an hour he was as good as new and we completed the job.
We left Raggart’s Well about four in the afternoon and made good time back toward the Alice. At Mud Tank just a few miles before we hit the bitumen, we decided to have a quiet dip. It was just at dusk and still pretty hot. We raced from the truck and dived into the cool water, only to race out quicker than we went in, rubbing ourselves down madly to get rid of the hundreds of stinging nits that we had failed to notice in our haste to cool off! That was the last, if not the least, of the disasters of the trip to Raggart’s Well.
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18. |
Language of The Stones
04:37
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Sit amongst the mulga bush and feel the earth turn
If the land could speak, it would be the language of the stones
a rock, grass, trees, a bird, stars, are all part of the whole mosaic and are living entities making up the web of life
The landscape of the Centre has for me the crystalline structure of the spirit patterns in time where the Australian people lived within the fine net of their culture, as part of their land. The feeling of being one with the land, the stars, and the stones was theirs.
If the land could speak, it would be the language of the stones
Language of the stones (Repeat)
As it came towards Christmas, I decided to take a bit of a rest from the heat and hard work. So in early December, I flew down to Sydney with my big hat and roll of 'roo skins and drawings. I took some drawings along to show the then-Director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Hal Missingham. He looked at my drawings and then sent me off to a chap who was managing David Jones' Gallery. He, in turn, was so off-hand to me, that I left feeling that there was only supposed to be one Australian artist and that was Sid Nolan and kangaroos were not particularly interesting as subject matter - dead or alive.
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19. |
Kangaroos
05:07
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How I came to draw kangaroos, of course was through Alan. We used to get wood for the fire every other Sunday afternoon, take the rifles and shoot a ’roo, or rabbits as the case may be, to help fill the larder. So I soon gained first-hand experience of the shooting and skinning of ’roos, or for that matter, many other animals that were used for tucker.
Later when I got my bike together again, I'd take the rifle and go out to where there was a rabbit warren that I knew, and wait till dusk, to get a shot at a bunny for next week’s meals. One evening I was quietly waiting, on a huge warren near Maggie’s Gap, when an eagle swooped low over me, and picked a kitten straight off the burrow, and flew away low into the ranges.
There were wonderful moments, when I sat alone in a patch of witchetty bush, and imagined I could feel the world turning slowly and hugely through space. I used to go out up the bitumen, turn off into the mulga and find a good place to watch ’roos through the glasses. I feel there is still a lot of observing to do of these animals. Even twenty odd years later there doesn’t seem to be very much written about them, but there's often a lot of loose opinion. (I may be doing some zoologists an injustice - my apologies.)
So I drew and painted ’roos dead and alive, but it was only in 1957 that I finally achieved my best work. That was much later and after I came to see the Centre in an entirely different way.
I returned to the Alice in 1955 on the ‘Ghan, travelling with George Brown, a commercial artist whom I met on the train. He gave me the book he was reading: a study of the life of Michelangelo. I wonder if he remembered that? It was a two-and-a-half day journey in those days and one that only those who experienced it could really know. It was like being suspended in time - days didn't matter as Lake Eyre floated past on the horizon, a mirage in a mirage, the ‘Ghan slowly making its way north - a kind of Noah's Ark - not with two of everything on board, but pretty damned close.
George Brown told me a story once of a happening in the town. As always I’ve probably got it all wrong, but this is how it went:
One Saturday the ‘Ghan as usual arrived, and a man descended to the platform. He was a large man with a deliberate manner, that’s why I say he descended. He had on an old-fashioned black suit, neat collar and tie, which was a bit incongruous and not particularly comfortable, as the temperature was over the 100°F mark. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief, which he neatly folded and placed in his pocket. His only luggage was a small, in fact a very small suitcase, the kind that children carry.
In his deliberate manner he approached a woman, who was standing waiting for the railway gate, and asked her to direct him to a boarding house. He had a rather light voice for such a large man, with an accent that may have been German. She directed him to likely accommodation, where I believe he settled into a room where he then lived for the entire period of his stay in the Alice. He obtained a job as a clerical assistant, at the Public Works Department and seemed to be a quiet chap, a little eccentric perhaps, but no more than others that had arrived in the Alice.
One morning, a Sunday morning, the residents of the Alice, those near the Anzac Hill in particular, became aware of a strange sound. On investigation they discovered our large, quiet man, seated at the base of the Anzac memorial, which stands on a little raised hill at the end of the town, blowing a horn which he had made out of a bullock's horn from the slaughter yard. There were murmurings of disquiet amongst the people of the town, and it seemed that in some way he had offended not only the town’s Sunday morning, but also its near-sacred memorial.
Not long after this the same large, quiet man was observed seated watching little children at play, at which he was smiling and clapping his hands.
A meeting was held, at which prominent members of the town decided he was not a suitable person for the town, and the police should be instructed to move him on as soon as possible.
The man was escorted to the Ghan, and seen to be settled in his seat, along with his small suitcase, and duly departed.
It was reported that on the way south, the ‘Ghan stopped for a short period as it was wont to do. During which stop the man descended to the saltbush-covered desert, and walked away carrying his small suitcase. Nobody noticed him go until the train made its next stop, and a guard saw that the man was no longer aboard.
The police were alerted, and it took them several days to discover him. He was suffering a little from his experience, but had survived it is thought, by drinking the moisture from paddy melons which grew profusely in the area. Everyone thought they were poisonous.
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20. |
Pink Fields of Salvation
03:51
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Walk into the desert, suitcase in hand
Walk into the dreamtime, meet the spirits there
Here the russet-coloured kangaroo grass, mantles the craggy outcrops and in the spring time, the wild shrubs that cling to the niches and crevasses,
Strange rock formations stand out against the sky - weatherworn shapes, sculptured by the passage of time into complex hieroglyphics or resemblances like that of the camel's head.
This is an ancient land where once the earth's crust thrust and twisted its troubled form into sharp, ridged outcrops and vast plateau, to be eroded by the years, silting the red-brown earth into the valleys; leaving the multi-coloured quartz and shale mountains, like old sentinels with ridged and seamed peaks, standing guard over distance through the long, bright sunlight days and clear, crystal nights.
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21. |
Natural Cathedral
03:42
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Easter of '55 I went to Uluru and the Olgas. It was traditional almost, for people to go to Uluru at Easter. I went with a group from the Public Works Department: a couple of young fellows, a couple of girls, couple of old-timers, all in a five-ton truck, bed rolls and tuckerbags.
I suppose there were a half dozen vehicles in all in the party, among them was Mr Kilgariff, who was 71 years old and it was his third trip out there. Our party consisted of a driver, the mechanic who drove the truck, and two hard-bitten characters from the Public Works Department. Both looked as if they’d go well as ex-cons in a B class movie. One was a plumber the other a carpenter. Where they had learned these skills one could only guess. In the town they were not exactly the nicest characters; but out in the bush they proved to be the best of company and excellent bushmen. Then there was the little chap who worked as a carpenter, and his girlfriend who worked in the town milk bar, and her girlfriend, Pauline Thomas, a radio girl from the Flying Doctor Service, and myself.
Bill Harney was appointed as the caretaker of Uluru that year. It must have amused him, to think of being anything as official as that.
Anyway, I climbed Uluru along with Mr Kilgariff, and left a message for Dave Milner, in an old bottle in the cairn on the top. I wonder if he ever received it? I know he went there, sometime in the late sixties.
The first morning at Uluru, I rose at daybreak and walked around it, arriving at Maggie's Springs at about 10:30, before it got too hot. I had arranged for our party to pick me up there the night before, and I felt confident in my ability to walk the distance in that time. My feeling on that walk was that of being near a huge natural cathedral, a sacred place. I know this is possibly a subjective and romantic idea, but I don’t mean a ‘cathedral’ in the normal sense.
During my short time in Alice, I was privileged in many ways to learn something of, and see the beginnings of the new way of thought that was coming about in the areas of anthropology and sociological study related to the Aboriginal people’s of Australia. The study of the people of Australia was beginning to take on characteristics of a more understanding nature. So much of the material gathered in the first half of the century was based on presumption and religious bias. The nature of the Aboriginal was presumed to be primitive, something to be changed, helped into a new and better way of life. Consequently, much of the culture and social organisation they possessed was either deliberately or accidentally destroyed. The white invaders of Australia had produced a rationale that justifies their conquest of the Australian indigenous people. The further south one lives the easier it is for we have wiped out just about every trace of their existence; but as you go north, it is not so easy. The victims of our conquest are very much in evidence and their dispossession apparent. There were two schools of thought in 1955. One, that you could kick them to death - that's the boots and stockwhip philosophy - or you can love them to death - that's the social welfare and handout philosophy. 'Assimilate and perish' are the slogans of the past and the survival of the fittest, the moral that justifies the act.
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22. |
Monolith
03:49
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No time to ponder on the thoughts of age
The smallest page belongs to man
And age-old rocks like these are books
That took a million suns to light.
How can one small twilight page express
The freshness of the childlike man
Who can with puny, understated words
Record the hugeness of this monolith.
This Monolith (Repeat)
Today I saw for the first time one of the many real wonders of the earth, Ayers Rock. To come upon this huge monolith translucent in the late evening like some blue alabaster sculpture that changed to pink, red, to blue to purple in the convolutions. Even though I'm clean once more, and the red dust is washed away, I doubt if I will ever be able to lose the memory. From the distance, it seemed like some fairy castle or rare jewel, and as it came closer, it developed as a huge crescendo saturating the senses and causing such feelings of humility that I felt it was wrong to be moving in the face of such immobility It is a puny effort on my part to describe something that seems to contain the deepest feelings of the earth and surely one of the last remote places where a man can feel the simplest and most fundamental emotions, where he can stand and hear the earth breathe, and catch some small glimpse of the truth of life and oneself.
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23. |
Sonnet For Life
04:32
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The crows turn slowly
Where the skinner bends
Blood upon the sandy soil
Marking where the lifetime ends.
The sun is setting, the shadows long
Somewhere there's a low bird's song
Shadows are slowly gone
And the sun setting.
It was death so quickly
Where the mulga grew
The flat slap of the twenty-two
The dying jump of the kangaroo
It was death so quickly.
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24. |
Guilty pleasure
02:28
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It was only late in '55 that I realised it was not just Ayers Rock that was a cathedral, it was the whole of the land. The land was living and legend. Not just the land, each rock, stone, tree and animal, the winds and rain that swept its most secret and distant places, the sunlight and stars of the blackest night, were the personages of its present and past, and to enter it you must believe in it, and become as part of it - another grain of sand in its immensity, or feel your affinity with a timeless totem, past and present. And we have ravaged the land and despoiled it in the name of our beliefs and the people of the land have been dispossessed, and their way of life changed. We may preserve little bits, but they are museum pieces - which is something our culture venerates and preserves with guilty pleasure, because now we possess them. And that is why I look at paintings of Aboriginals and drawings of Aboriginals, my own included, as drawings that are the results of this process of change.
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25. |
Brylcreem and Body Odour
05:36
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In the time Alan and I worked together, we had two Aboriginal labourers. The first was Jim, a young Aranda man with a cheerful nature, and the build of a light-weight boxer. We worked together on the mixer, shovelling sand and gravel when we were pouring concrete floors. All floors in the Alice are concrete, white-ant resistant.
Jim was of the younger generation. He'd worked for other builders and knew the ropes. To work with Aborigines it is necessary to be cheerful, laugh a lot and make a game out of the work as much as possible. All pretty good ideas when you come to think of it.
Jim was bossed by Alan and I was the mate. This is something else, the hierarchy has to be understood: who is the boss or who the boss is. It is important that the boss is the right distance away from the ‘boy’. Undue familiarity is soon traded upon, and thought of as weakness. There're the right kind of jokes, and the wrong kind of jokes; where to ride in the truck and where not to ride. Now, young men of all races tend to be a bit grubby. Jim’s idea of being clean was to swamp his hair in hair oil. So to ride in the cab of the truck with him over any distance, could be a test of one’s ability to breathe a mixture of Brylcream and strong body odour. Alan used to let Jim ride in the truck front, so I used to think of reasons why I should ride on the tray!
After a while Jim started to change. It took about two months. He started arriving late to work, missing days and then turning up on pay day to get his money. One day, Alan made a joke about it, 'Why he didn’t take off his shirt to work?' And he grabbed the front of it, to reveal that he was painted up for corroboree.
‘Oh ho, ho!’, he said, ‘Been out man-making again.’
It was all said in fun and in good spirit, but I noticed Jim didn’t laugh quite as readily. Then one day Jim turned up, sat down and said, ‘I’m sick boss. I want to sit down.’ And so Alan let him go.
Soon after, Jim was picked up with grog in his possession, and sent out to the mission.
Now I’m not being critical about this, it was a common story. The mixture of influences at work over this young man were not able to be changed by us. Alan did his best to make the young man happy in his work. We never gave him alcohol which is poison to both white and black, but even worse for the black man. The elders of his tribe still dominated much of his young life. The concept of ‘man making’, initiation, circumcision, were then still a very important tribal rite. The tribal laws which enable the younger sons to marry only after the older have married were still observed. The introduction of alcohol to the Aboriginal by irresponsible whites in order to seduce the black woman, was a well-known practice.
The resulting breakdown of sexual taboos amongst the young was the direct result of this, and the consequence? an undermining and conflict with authority in the social hierarchy, where to survive as a tribe, it must be observed.
Our next labourer was Fred Sutherland, a man of about forty, a rolly polly man of the Luritja tribe, married to a young Aranda woman. If I remember correctly, Fred had taken the name Sutherland from the man on whose station he grew up. He was first a camel driver - stockman; later drove the night cart in Alice Springs. He was an excellent driver and I believe mechanic. He was sacked from his job on the night cart because he complained about the brakes being no good. He was referred to us by the Department of Native Affairs, and recommended as a good and willing worker.
When I write this I keep thinking, 'I wonder, when was slavery abolished?'
Fred had the appearance of a sort of Mark Twain character: ragged trousers, no shoes, feet as hard as horse's hooves (I once saw him slip on concrete); a checked shirt bleached by many washings and a big hat, old and battered.
On his first payday he bought a beautiful cream Stetson from Thomas’ store that he treasured for about two weeks; then I saw it on another head - a member of his family.
Every evening his wife and young family waited by the gate for him, a lovely buxom young woman with three little children, ranging from about five to eighteen months. Fred was, for all his ragged appearance, scrupulously clean. He showered every day, as I found out when we went together, to work at Hermannsburg. I think he was about forty - only because when he let his beard grow it was snow white. This he shaved off using a razor blade just by itself, held in his fingers.
He was a very generous man, and many times I would have to give him a couple of quid more when I met him in the street on pay day, then supervise his entry into the sweets shop so that his family got a fair share of his earnings.
I liked Fred because he was a happy man with a simple approach to life. His children used to peep through the cracks in the small shed that I lived in at this time to see the pictures that I painted. They knew more about me than many of the white people in the town. The black community lived in the streets and in the bed of the Todd River. Not much happened in the town that was not common knowledge amongst them. In fact, when I look back at it, I knew very little of the local life of Alice in these times. I worked hard physically, consequently I was tired at night. At weekends I painted or rode the bike out into the surrounding country.
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26. |
Kadaitcha
04:58
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Just prior to my arrival in Alice Springs, there had been a court hearing. This is my account of it which may not be accurate in detail, but at least tells the general story:
A young lad was initiated by the tribal rite of circumcision. He was I believe, not even 15 years of age. The ceremony itself is sufficient to scare the living daylights out of a person, let alone the primitive methods used in the actual circumcision itself. The boy was then taken out into the bush, his land, where equipped with his spear, woomera and boomerang, he was to survive until the blood was no longer on his body. In this time he must not speak, or associate in any way with any woman, not even to be seen by her at a distance.
It appears that this lad had a sister, with whom he was very close, and instead of leaving the camp site, he waited because he was afraid - and who could blame him - until the next day when he approached and spoke with his sister, seeking comfort. He was seen by other members of the tribe before he ran off into the mulga.
The tribe held a meeting, and decided that he had broken the tribal taboos. They then appointed a ‘Kadaitcha’, a man to play the part of the spirit who knows all. He wears Kadaitcha shoes made of blood and feathers which show no tracks. No one knows from whence he comes or where he goes - he is the avenging spirit of the tribe.
The Kadaitcha pursued the young lad and killed him, breaking each of the main bones of the body so his spirit could not return at sunset, as can that of the great snake.
At this point the police intervened, and coming to the tribe, arrested the man who was known to have been the Kadaitcha. A trial was set and a jury failed to agree on a verdict. The man who was the Kadaitcha, worked peaceably in the prison garden, until one day he cleared out and went bush.
Now I may not have this all correct, but it's the kind of story that belongs to another civilisation in another time; but I believe [it happened] in 1953
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27. |
Man Under The Stars
02:35
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28. |
Kadaitcha WIll Come
02:58
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29. |
It Was The Kadaitcha
01:40
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30. |
Spring Song
05:47
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Spring Song haunts me as a flower
Spring Song, trying to fit a daydream over the past (repeat)
My latest picture is a sort of springtime with a didgeridoo player and young lubras. I am working on a number of others of beasts in the crush at the yards, and one of a combination of didgeridoo player and 'roos. Maybe someday I will show a lot of paintings that cover these few years of work, but that must be done with a lot of happy sort of feelings.
There are times, Doug, when a bloke has his doubts and although circumstances that have been, cannot be changed nor the results of the years be truly assessed, I sometimes feel as if I would like to write about it all a little. This last year in which I have deliberately put myself into new and different places, has almost been a summing up and consolidation of the other years and it's about this consolidation that I am writing. I think you understand, Doug that painting to me is the only stable reality besides my home that I have. When I talk of my home, it includes not only my natural home place, but all the people who have contributed to the extension of that initial environment. When I talk of painting, I mean that part of me which has, in ideas, realised itself in painted form. These are simple definitions, I think, and easily understood. Although these two definitions can be realised separately, they are in actuality combined and over the years, become interwoven and according to the circumstances become stressed one way or the other. The continual seeking to extend one's home place, is a natural tendency. Whether it be in the form of creating one's own home and family, or of extending the living environment in terms of human relationships and places, it is not a matter of travelling great distances, but more the integration of oneself within the concept and process of living. It is only when this integration occurs and that is at the peak periods of awareness (all emotionally different) that the extension of ideas into another form is possible.'
It may be just the contrast of places and models of living but today I'm having the great personal hate session. A pity it isn't limited to a mere two minutes.... How much a little love in return can mean to the constant man whose effort seems so lonely. I can hardly gain anything by the contemplation of death, my sonnets will be, I hope, contemplation of life. The awful realities? of the Orwellesque can so easily influence the garbage of living and the refuse becomes the bigger part. And in a state of realising, I am aware, too, aware, that although many changes occur, the inevitable continuation of life and living to dying is -
Or perhaps because one's loves are so fully placed, so deeply felt, to be timeless in o'clock degree and leave wanting fulfillment an aching void explored with sighs. What can a voice say when confronted with feeling years distance spaced far apart between the desires of flesh and love of beauty in no sense but timeless. A man - a woman, divided by a common factor or denominator ten of twelve o'clock why subtract? There is beauty in a wrinkle as in smoothness, firm and permanent grow age old or age cold. Warmth is only found by addition of o'clock - children and mothers holding fathers' seed in warmth and knowing living to dying is -
It is my mistake and none but many are made in truth can love be named or given body? A wanton can disguise frustration and make a memory drag feet in puddles for child contradiction. Or listen with a smile to sweet nothings and false passion. There is none so false as those whose seeing is cannot.'
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31. |
Grasshopper Morning
05:23
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32. |
Hermannsberg
05:35
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The last job I did with Alan was the hospital at Hermannsburg at the Lutheran Mission. It was a large building situated beside the mission garden towards Heavitree Gap, designed and built by a member of the Lutheran community, a German builder who was a master craftsman. He'd been trained in Germany and was both builder and civil engineer. I cannot remember his name, but he was a most impressive man, and his workmanship was near perfection.
Hermannsburg has a long history and is an example of how men and women from an entirely different culture, can survive in what to them must have been a completely hostile environment.
The old buildings of Hermannsburg with their mud walls, long, cool rooms - are a triumph of building in themselves. I thought of Hermannsburg as a small metropolis beside the Finke, under the shade of Mt Carmel. It was a town in itself, with church, school, infirmary, residence and work buildings; then the inner suburbs, and lower down near the banks of the river - the outer suburbs.
The inner suburbs - a group of galvanised sheds surrounded by dust, the houses of Aboriginal workers of Hermannsburg; and the outer suburbs - a collection of whirlies and gunyas occupied by the rest of the Aranda mission people.
The whole mission was a dust bowl caused by the constant passage of bare-footed people. When the windy times come, the dust banked up against the walls and into the dwellings, until it's hard to understand how anything could ever be free of its soft, powdery layer. Pastor Gross was the head of the mission at this time, and Mr Latz his head stockman.
Mr Latz was not anybody’s picture of a stockman, except for his big hat. He was a small cheerful man who went about his work, organising the Hermannsburg property with a bustling authority that contrasted with the rather slow character of the Aboriginal people.
Hermannsburg was of course, the home of Albert Namatjura, the artist, and the group of aboriginal artists that followed: Adolph Ingamala, Perrijilka and many others.
Namatjira would ride back and forth to the town, in the back of a truck - his truck - one of the many that he owned. A used car dealer’s dream was Namatjira. He purchased more used cars than anybody else. I always think of him as a rather big, stout, happy man surrounded by children; and of his best water colours, that were done from the immediate subject with the qualities of Cotman. But then it is wrong to compare, for they were his early vision of his land done in a European way.
He and his land are victims and we have destroyed them both. The story of how they were taught to paint by Rex Battarbee is well known. Strange, but although I knew where he lived in Alice Springs, I could never pluck up the nerve to call on him. I would have liked to have met him.
One day I went sketching with the Inkamalas. They had an old Ford car. Off we went, a few miles up the creek, dogs and all, and sat and painted. I did a dreadful water colour, but they were kind to me and said, I was a ‘real’ artist. I don’t know what that meant, so I exchanged the compliment and told them superfluously, that their country was the most beautiful in the world. With that, we ate kangaroo tail roasted in the fire, a bit like ox-tail but bigger - and game-ier!
Pastor Gross insisted that we see Namatjira's film, and a screening was arranged. The head man was told that the women must not leave the mission during the showing and was very annoyed when all the women disappeared on the night. He said they were Christians now and it was their right to be there! But there were scenes of corroboree in the film, and they are taboo for women.
The women lined up every day at the infirmary fence with their babies, to receive the fresh milk from the mission goats and cows. They must feed their babies there and not take it away for all the old men would drink it.
Although I was only at Hermannsburg for six weeks, I experienced two events of significance: one happens every year - the other less frequently. The first was Kaporilja Day, the picnic day to celebrate the pipeline that supplies Hermannsburg with natural spring water [the pipe runs downhill some four miles from Kaporilja Springs] and is probably the main reason [that] the mission has survived for so many years; or perhaps I do the Lutheran spirit an injustice.
The second event was of much more interest to me. I was invited to sit in on an address to the members of the community, by T.G.H. (Ted) Strehlow, who was then Reader in Languages at the University of South Australia. Ted Strehlow’s father, [a Lutheran pastor] was one of the founders of Hermannsburg, and he, Ted, was brought up on the mission. It was this talk on the social structure and background of the Aboriginal people of this area, that changed my understanding of the Territory.
It was quite a few years ago now and I am writing from hindsight, which may or may not be an advantage. I think the most vivid and descriptive phrase that Ted Strehlow used was, if I remember it correctly, that the white man strode through the gossamer structure of Aboriginal culture, without knowing what he destroyed.
I left Alice Springs on November 6th, 1955, and I've never gone back. I don’t think I've even written to anybody except George Brown at Christmas times when we exchanged cards.
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33. |
Skinning The Kill
03:31
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The pursuit of an idea can be a long and sometimes never-ending activity and that of one's identity linked with ideas and concepts of place, a lifetime's work. Self-discovery has been a fairly consistent theme of the arts during this century. In many instances, it has become the sole subject matter of the artist, producing many examples of introverted imagery, sometimes explicit but more often than not, obscure. To be self-motivated as an artist often means dissociation from society. It is difficult to find a social cause or effect and use that as the starting point for individual expression. The difficulties arise when, out of necessity the questions and mores of society are posed. The political, moral, and ethical balance of humanity at any given time contains the motivating pressures that activate the artist but in the context of time, they are not simple or clearly defined.
These paintings are a good example of learning by doing. By seeking for source material in Central Australia, I thought I may be able better to understand what to do in practical terms to express and communicate to others the sensation of place, the perception of humanity and sense of curiosity about the richness of life by means of a kind of visual poetry. My first instinct for the use of my learned painting skills was towards an expression of social reality using the term in its general sense. This has been the general development of western culture over the centuries - society and reality - the way in which we see ourselves as part of, or apart from society. Reality [is] the substance that gives us the sensation of being. At first I looked for reality in the people - not the Europeans, but the Aboriginals. The obvious social reality is not one for the European to be proud of, but not very different to any of the social situations created by colonial peoples all over the world. Learning is a process that takes time. Over the period between l954-55, I painted a few pictures of Aboriginals, and the more I learned, the less I wanted to paint pictures about them. [In] those that I did paint, I wanted to show something of their oneness with the land. They are not failures as pictures, but there again they are not successful. Eventually I felt ashamed. I realise now these were my feelings only and that perhaps there is something there that would be seen by others as an attempt to communicate something of that rare quality possessed only by the indigenous people of a country whose undisturbed history was as ancient as the land itself. My reaction to a growing awareness of the social ills brought about by this disastrous clash of cultures was to examine my own people. Unconsciously, I began to depict that aspect of my own people that demonstrated a ruthlessness in the nature of man killing the animals, an accepted and necessary part of his survival. The last painting of this time shows a man skinning the kill, a kind of sad ritual belonging to the sunset.
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34. |
Epilogue
05:55
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In the painted land,
the distance between the present and the past
Of yesterday and tomorrow is not a measure of time.
The search of youth and age are real
And man-making time comes when childhood has gone.
Who are we, the white invaders of the land
To call their beliefs brutality
When ours have grown in monstrous ways
From practices, inseparable from our settlement
Of flogging and hanging days,
To those impersonal ways
Where all life can be destroyed.
The journey to the Territory was not the finish for me, in fact it was the beginning. After a short stay in Fiji, I returned to Melbourne where I spent four years of ‘Sunday painting’, preparing an exhibition of work based on the Northern Territory experience.
Although I had found a subject (an absorbing one that has lasted me many years) I still did not realise [its] nature ... or how to paint it.
In 1956, painters in Melbourne were just discovering contemporary American painting - modern painting - other than what was generally termed the 'school of Paris.' I remember seeing work by Jackson Pollock in 1949 and reading an article called, if I remember rightly, ‘A New Method of Drawing’. The names of Motherwell, Kline, Gorky, Rothko, were becoming better known, as was the style better termed ‘Abstract Expressionism’.
Although I had seen the work of Taschists in Paris - namely Riopelle - and later in Sydney, when Bob Klippel exhibited with Ralph Balson, I could not really equate ‘Modern’ imagery with anything I had learned previously. I was stuck with Picasso. That was as ‘modern’ as I could get! Now I had the subject, but the means of painting it still eluded me. So I went in search of new methods and influences.
I met George Johnson the New Zealand painter, and through his influence was able to make a closer study of Mondrian, and the formal abstract painters that had until then, never particularly interested me. This is the reason that in 1960 when I exhibited my Central Australian paintings at Gallery A in Melbourne, they were abstract patterns that had no illustrative elements in them. It seemed to disappoint those people who had always thought of me as a figurative painter, and the work was not reviewed with much enthusiasm. In the words of one reviewer at the time, he ‘didn't dig it’! I realise now that that was not the important part of painting but it has made me very sympathetic towards young painters who spend a lot of hard effort only to be given very short treatment by newspaper reviewers!
When we cease to be influenced by the richness of our own life, its people and surroundings, and our methods and ideas become set and rigid, a certain happiness of discovery is lost. Perhaps that is the reason I never became the sort of artist I had imagined I would like to be.
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35. |
The Dying Kangaroo
05:52
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The cards are played out at birth
To the players on the earth
We see the sun and raise the moonshine
Some lose their hearts on the cloths line
Space wave flowers of your mind
Daytime nighttime players find
A full house will win the day to die.
A wounded heart is but a sigh
A kingdom for your wooden horse
or a trumpet blast to shake the walls
sheltered thoughts on their way to blossoming
Gives only a shallow satisfaction
What is the use of adding up old scores and rationalising the past with all its many memories
to find the ifs and buts that mark the way,
each looking backward on the stone words grave
The paths are only traversed once with a light heart.
Each returning trip has more burden
and the scattering of our youth is all too fast
to make a memory a lifetime's resting place.
Better to seek maturity.
Comes the stranger with sweet poison on a devil's tongue
to whisper in a moon glade, beguiling the senses
with solved conundrums
that seem on first hearing,
like a child's fairy story or some Pandora, still withholding hope
Makes all other temptation seem more desirable than the last (Repeat)
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Euie b Graham Canberra, Australia
Ending formal lessons on violin, I began writing songs in 1992, graduating to a four-track cassette recorder shortly after, and the addictive journey of composing then recording was entrenched. I continue, assimilating influences and forging my own way. I shy away from performing, I write, record then move on. I would love others to listen and enjoy, and hold out hope that I May find an audience. ... more
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