I was a station manager near Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley for 28 years.
I am a woman. My mustering team and co-workers included the Aboriginal men of Fitzroy Crossing
in Nukabah. When I began in 1977, the town of Fitzroy Crossing was a seasonal home to
many language groups of Aboriginal people. Life for these people then was a stockman and
alcohol use was only occasional for most. This was to change over time for the worst.
Rights, the Aboriginals got their rights in the 60s, meaning that they had the right
to drink. So the other day, when I met a man in the post office, an Aboriginal man,
who I know for a while, he said, boo-boo at the pub. Boo-boo is my own head stockman here,
who now, because of his rights and every other rights, has no work because there is no more
work for a stockman. The work kind of ended for a stockman and no one hires him anymore,
and so I felt kind of sad, and that's where I got the idea for that painting, and that's
why I put wrongs on the end of it. Something sort of tells you that it ain't all right.
Rights or wrongs. Rights or wrongs depicts life in Fitzroy Crossing. The flesh color
is the white man's world in which the Aboriginal lives. His dream time, blue bubble, is attached
to a red can. He wanders between life at the pub, fast food at the roadhouse, locked
in jail, a lockup, two up games beneath the condom tree, illness in the hospital. Later,
much later, but I put in my painting early, was to come in the money machines. He used
to be free, as shown on the outside of the globe. He used to be free. Red cans come out
of the earth in unlimited supply and flow into their world in abundant supply, and they
come forever now, ever, and ever. When he gets older, he has to go live here in the old folks
home, and that's where he dies. And then when they die, big funerals happen, and they're
taken and buried at the burying place just out of Fitzroy Crossing. That's their entire
life. These men represent all the Stockmans. I knew through all the years, and there are
different hats the way they were. They're my men. We purposely know women here because
this is the world of men. Later, it was to involve some women, but mostly this all involves
the Stockmans. That's wet season grass. This is before the wet season. Browns. I put the
beer in the King Brown. A killer on the move. Booze and a brown snake. This one is called
a triumph of beer brown, and it's four slices of life, starting with life as it was, and
I first encountered it, and ending with life as it was when I left 28 years later. It begins
up here, and beer brown. That's beer brown. It's just beginning to go out. There's a pub
in Fitzroy Crossing again. Flesh colored Fitzroy Crossing. Beer brown is just going
out with his cans to see who he can get, and everybody's out there then. All the Stockmans
are there, the animals. It's just starting. Then the second slice of life, there's more
people in town. Beer brown is bigger. He's obviously gotten more people, and he's got
more cans, and there's less activity out here now. It's more people in because beer
brown has gotten to them. In the third slice of life, beer brown has a lot of people in
town, and he's going out because there's one man left out there. Helicopters are having
to round up the animals. There are no more horses. Beer brown is going to get the last
guy. In the last slice, beer brown is one. The helicopter, there's no man by the fire.
Beer brown even has men inside him, and those cans in beer brown, the can, the red cans
are now inside the man's dream time, inside beer brown because he's triumphed. He's won.
Men are alcoholics in town, and living in town is alcoholics. Beer brown has beat them.
This one is called no law. Burning the land has no meaning, and the land is always black.
At first the slice of life is good, but now all is burnt, and the people's dream time
has the red can inside it. The people cannot escape the finality of alcohol addiction and
the burning of all the land out of think, and the destruction of the natural creatures
out there. That's just to bring us back to where it was in the beginning, and now this
is the end. The end of the Aboriginal Stockman.
