- When I was a young fella, liked to call me Ramblers.
I had three dogs.
They used to call me the Rambler.
I never used to be home.
I used to be always away with three dogs.
Yeah, it was different.
I was always alone.
That's why loneliness never worries me.
I don't understand bored.
I'm never bored in the house as long as I'm painting
or doing something.
Yes, I'll just show you.
One in 39, yeah.
That's the five old houses there, see?
I had six brothers and six sisters.
I was born at the Top Camp 8th of the 3rd, 1927, March.
Three camps.
Top Camp is where I lived.
Then there's Middle Camp near the dump.
Then right down the bottom end
there's Bottom Camp.
Lot of people lived in different places along the rivers
and that and different places and times.
They're depression days, they're very hard.
Hard living.
I was always away working
cotton or ring-barking
and I do a lot of ring barking.
I was in a car accident.
I think 1980, 83,
bringing Christmas presents home to my son.
And I was working the cotton,
and they said, "Don't you have a beer with us?"
I said, I don't drink or smoke when I'm driving
you can't concentrate.
Like when I'm painting, I can't concentrate.
Even a little bit of spit
from the canvas distracts me, you know?
This woman come off a road,
coming from Moree,
I was goin' towards Mungindi,
and smashed me up real bad.
When the car accident,
Only thing I say to her...
Please God don't let me die.
Pulled me out the car,
and I said George, gotta get my leg cut off
had to go around and get my leg cut off.
I had a very rough time.
And I had my hands on the steering wheel.
That's here today, you see?
I try to open it but that's how they went.
The death, death grip you know.
Kimberly Tap used to work here in the art gallery
She was a Christian lady.
She'd come and just talk to me.
And get me to paint, you know.
Here are the little hairy man with
a little fire and all hair,
that's why I put him there.
Sometimes I do, you wouldn't believe it.
I can do sixteen hours a day.
Yeah!
Sometimes my son and daughter-in-law says
aren't you going to have a feed?
and I say no, you know.
I say don't worry about eating when I'm painting
I love life and I love painting.
And I find that I have strange powers.
You know and I tell,
see I can't open my hands,
I tell the spirit people to help me.
People may not believe me but I don't care.
Ah that's the dance of the animals.
I see them doing that in that 1932.
I was only five years old.
That's the corroboree, that's the circle there.
That's the bora ring where they took the young
men and initiated them.
No women, only men do that dance
and the snakes, and emus, and kangaroos,
using the clapsticks and the didgeridoos.
I'm a man who lives in the past
I don't live in the future.
I live in the past.
That's why I do a lot of paintings in the past,
because I lived it.