In 2005 an iteration of Peggy Patrick’s ‘Mistake Creek Massacre Boab’ was exhibited as part of the ‘Beyond the Frontier’ exhibition at Sherman Galleries, Sydney. The wall text was prepared by Frances Kofod and read as below;

The boab tree near Mistake Creek on the edge of Bow River Station looms large in the memory of Peggy Patrick and many of her family. Not only did she grow up hearing the tragic story of the deaths of many of her mother’s relations, but in recent times she has been attacked for telling the truth about her people’s sorrowful history.

she said of this painting series:

Danya joomooloony now ngarak-garri ninima, Goortbelayin-wanggoony danyga from ganggayi mine, jawoojim, goort-garri bemberrayitbe doolgajim-birri, thetji-ngarri berrani joola-jayam.

That boab tree that I have painted here is the one that lives at the killing place, at the place where my mother’s mother and father and their brothers and sisters were shot with rifles, where they were killed like dogs.

Earlier she told the story for the exhibition, Blood on the Spinifex.

Ganggay, nyaganybe, thamanybe, gooral, goora-warriny, ngaga wanyagewarra-warriny, thetji bemberramangbe. Barengji bemberramangbe. Thetji berrani, goort bemberramidbe. Might be gardiya couldn’t grow em up them kid, that the way he bin kill em allabat them little little one, last baby.

My mother’s mother and her brothers and sisters, my mother’s father and his brothers and sisters, my mother’s older brother’s sisters and baby brother and sister, were all killed. They smashed the babies with a stick. They killed them, the whole lot died together. The white people did not want to rear the babies. That’s why they killed them.

My two mother ’scape away, two big one. And two uncle bin get shot. One fella bin get shot la leg. They bin still la bush them two. One died in Fremantle. The other bin all day tell us now, uncle, for Lena for father. They tell us what bin happen like in that Mistake Creek.

My mother and her sister, the two bigger children, escaped. Two uncles were wounded, one in the leg. They got away into the bush. One died in Fremantle jail and the other, Lena Nyadbi’s father, used to tell us the story.

Well they bin la bush that two. They bin still la bush that two, long way. And they seen it. When they bin see fire, ‘We’ll go look,’ mum bin say, nother one bin more bigger one. ‘Me and you go look. Might be somebody bin left.’ When they bin look, all burning everything, and two fella bin start cry for their mother and father. Blood everywhere they bin see where they bin dragging them in. They was still waiting la fire place cause they, supposing any one bin come back. And that the way that two white bloke bin find em two fella and they bin pick ’em up and take ’em la that place now, Blackfella Creek.

Those two were away from the camp in the bush. They saw the fire and said to each other, ‘We’ll go and look, maybe someone is left.’ Then they saw everyone burning and started to cry for their mother and father. There was blood where the bodies had been dragged in. They were waiting at the fireplace when the two white men from Blackfella Creek found them and took them back.

They bin get shot by Major. Major bin pick them two up and take them up thatay and he bin get killed then. I think before that, that thing bin happening. Major bin get killed front of mum mob now. When Major bin get shot old granny for melabat he bin find them, he was a police boy too. Old Woombalminy belong to that Bow River Station now. That man bin find em. ‘Oh my two garli I didn’t know you were still alive. I’ll take you two fella.’

The two white men were later killed by Major. Major took the two girls to his camp and then later he was killed. I think that thing happened before that. Major was killed in front of my mother and her sister. When Major was killed, my grandmother’s brother was a police boy with the police group. He was called Wumbalminy, one of the traditional owners of Bow River Station country. He saw the two of them and said: ‘Oh my two nieces. I did not know that you were still alive. I’ll take you two.’ He took them back to Turkey Creek.

That’s the one all his mum bin get killed now, own father, own mother, own brother, own sister. That nother two young one for mum for brother and sister bin die. Only four bin left. Proper younger one, they bin kill em got a stick all abat. I think. They bin couldn’t keep em, nothing. Sometime mum bin all day cry for it when he bin tell us stories.

Yes. That’s the place [near the boab tree] where her mother was killed, her own father, own mother, own brother, own sister. Her baby brother and sister died. Only four survived. The really young ones they killed with a stick because they did not want to rear them. Sometimes my mother used to cry when she told us these stories.

- Author Frances Kofod, 2005

As a group the Jirrawun Artists told the stories of the recent the painful history of violence that ravaged the East Kimberley during and following the state-sanctioned land acquisition by pastoralists which commenced in the 1880’s. Through this sharing the artists believed they could contribute to a world in which all people could be valued; hard truths could be told and heard and the experience of peoples out side the dominant culture valued.

The Jirrawun painting studio was a site of contemporary art practice. A place where artists and their supporters engaged in drawn out conversations about contemporary art, concepts and ideas. Through Tony Oliver (Jirrawun Coordinator and co-founder), and the many other visitors to Jirrawun arts, the artists were exposed to works by contemporary artists working in wider

Australia and overseas. Amongst the conversations was an ongoing dialogue between Peggy Patrick and Tony Oliver. Through this dialogue the two worked together to conceptualise ways in which Peggy’s visual art practice could draw on her passion and experience as a performing artist (dancer and song-women). As a result, rhythm, repetition and a consideration of the artists gesture are reoccurring themes in Peggy’s artwork.

Marlem Marlem (the action of painting up the body before a Joonba performance) is also the title of a series of large-scale gestural works created by Peggy performing the action of painting up the body with ochre directly onto her canvas. In these works Peggy’s gestures are loose and expressive. The marks on the canvas clearly revealing the use of her fingers and hands. In contrast to Marlem Marlem the repetition in ‘Mistake Creek Massacre’ series is created using a stencil to repeat the form of the boat tree that marks the site of a specific massacre that was carried out by pastoralists in 1915. Since this time the event has been carried through Gija memory as a Joonba (song and dance) cycle shared between generations.

Looking at Peggy’s ‘Mistake Creek Massacre’ series Andy Warhol’s Campbells soup cans come to mind. There are the obvious visual elements of repetition and bold dense colours. And there is also something else, a reminder that memory is not limited to one site - it belongs at once to the past and to the future, it is re-occurring and embodied, a memory does not exist in isolation, rather it is held within the world-view of an individual or people. Nicolas Rothwell, in his catalogue essay that accompanied the ‘Beyond the Frontier’ exhibition at Sherman Galleries, Sydney, describes something of his own and Peggy’s dual experience of remembering the massacre at Mistake Creek amongst events of here and now;

Sunlight was filtering through the leaves of the ancient Mistake Creek boab: Peggy Patrick, wearing a bright pink top, pink floral dress, and smart black court shoes, ran briskly through the events that took place, almost a century ago, underneath the shade of its canopy. Here is where they burned the bodies: here where her grandmother hid away. Notes are taken, documentary pictures too, as though the past could be exhumed, and its flow and run of causes fixed. I was standing off to one side, trying to solve familiar problems: how

to behave, at such a place of memory; how to reimagine the crush of vanished experiences. She came over to me.

‘You’re a good-looking boy,’ she said, and glanced down and took my hand, and kissed it, lightly, with the rapidity of a humming-bird, several times.

‘You like Aboriginal women?’ ‘Well, of course,’ I was beginning to reply, but Peggy had swept far ahead.

‘I had a white boy, not long ago – here in the Kimberley. He slept with me every night, but he wouldn’t do anything …’

‘That must have been quite frustrating ...’

‘But he loved me. I liked him.’

The light and shade from the boab played on her face. She was standing, by this stage, pressed close up to my side, leaning her weight against my shoulder, the light floral aroma of her scent forming a kind of veil around us as she whispered these confidences.

‘Don’t be so sad about all that history,’ she went on: ‘That was a long time back. There are other stories now – maybe like you and me.’

But wasn’t the past imprinted in her thoughts at every second, I wanted to ask, as we picked our way back slowly across the red soil and lush grasses?

Didn’t she feel the intruding weight of time, shaping her thoughts, crying out, taking possession of her, in just the way it did whenever she sang, in her high, keening voice, ancestral mourning songs?

‘Of course,’ she murmured, and the shower of light kisses continued discreetly as we walked. ‘Of course I see them all time, my people gone, there’s a big mob of them out here – but there’s this world too. I tell you what I think! – I think maybe you and me should mate up.’

‘Like horses, you mean?’

‘Why not? – Haven’t you ever seen a black woman before?’

‘Well, it’s a sudden development, Peggy ...’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ She laughed, and frowned: ‘I can just wait for you, in Turkey Creek, you can ring me up – buy me dresses, come and see me there. Don’t worry about the old boab tree. That’s all gone now, and we all live here together. The tree – we just paint him to remember him – he’ll be with me even when he’s fallen down.’

And those words, breezily thrown out beside the highway, as road trains full of condemned cattle from the great stations of the East Kimberley came hurtling past, stayed with me – and I can see Peggy, even as she speaks them, drawing her jet-black, wavy hair from her face, shading her eyes from the burning sun, smiling at the strange patterns and echoes of her frontier life. Far from Mistake Creek, and far away from her, I still know something of the boab’s fate: it fell to the ground, tamed by age, this past wet season during a lightning storm – but it still survives, and puts forth new leaves and sheen-covered pods.

And it lives on in colour too, in Peggy’s Andy Warhol painting series, its gaunt trunk against blank colour fields, like a stamped shape of memory, or a sheltering embrace – and the colour of the background, in some of the emailed images I study on my computer screen halfway across the world, is bright pink, and gleaming with the Kimberley light that shone that humid day on Peggy’s startling dress.

- N. Rothwell, Beyond the Frontier, Sherman Galleries in association with Jirrawun Arts. 2005

There is no mistaking the serious nature of Peggy’s Mistake Creek Massacre works and whilst the events that inspired this work can not be forgotten the spirit in which Peggy shares her story is one that continues to be curious, to have hope and ultimately to be driven to find new ways of sharing and working together.

(8 panels 120 x 120cm each)