Growing up out
at La Perouse, my grandfather and uncles were fishermen.
They used to do the hauling, with the nets.
And, growing up through the sixties, we’d sit
with grandfather watching for the fish to come.
He’d blow the whistle and me uncles would row the boat out around the fish.
And usually around Easter time, well what we call Easter now,
the mullet used to run up the coast,
the deep-sea mullet that we call bullies.
That’s what inspired me to do that because that connects it
to the east coast, hauling the mullet
from south of the border to the north, right
along the east coast of New South Wales.
In 2000 I started going to TAFE
in an Aboriginal course
and that really got me back into me culture and then I just run with it.
Now I’m a teacher,
I teach my cultural practices such as spear making.
I teach Nawi
or bark canoe making, I practice that.
And I weave.
I am the senior male weaver on the east coast of NSW,
and I’ve been weaving for twenty years
and teaching for about fifteen.
When Wollongong Art Gallery
rang us up and told us that they were putting our
prints on display, we just drove up and had a look,
because we wanted to see it on the lighthouse.
But when we got there, we realised that
they had changed
the 3D to moving.
We were
wowed, we couldn’t believe it.
When they said the prints,
then we were thinking which prints, but then we jerried up to
what prints they were and we just thought they would be still
but when we saw them moving, in motion, it was great.
We were quite surprised that they done that to them.
It’s pretty good working with Wollongong Galley again, we’re quite happy with them
but that
exhibition just wowed us, you know.
I felt great, yea know.
I felt proud actually and you know, a real surprise that wow,
they’ve got all the fish moving, you know
because there is quite a few fish
on that print.
Pulling out old work, you know, that’s been put away
in storage at the art gallery,
they’ve got a few things of ours and we’d
like them to out you know,
where people can see them.
And wow, you
know, it’s just one of those things that astonishes you.
Our Dreaming back to life, yeah, that’s it,
that’s how we see it.