📍Hermannsburg (Ntaria), Northern Territory 0872, Australia
1902 – 1959“I was born at Hermannsburg, the Lutheran mission on the Finke River in the Western Arrernte country of central Australia, in 1902. The missionaries baptised me Albert, and I grew up between two worlds: mission school, hymns and work in the day, and the law, stories and land of my Arrernte people. At thirteen I went through initiation and learned the laws and the sacred places of my country. At seventeen I married Rubina, from the Luritja people, and together we raised a large family. I worked as a stockman, camel driver and craftsman, carving and burning designs into wood. I loved to draw, but it was in 1934 that my life changed, when the painter Rex Battarbee came to Hermannsburg to paint. I went with him as a camel boy on his trips into the MacDonnell Ranges and to Palm Valley, and in return he taught me watercolour. I already knew this country deeply, every gorge, ghost gum and mountain, and with the paint I found a way to show it to the world, its red cliffs, purple distances and white-barked trees. My first exhibition, in Melbourne in 1938, sold out, and I became the most famous Aboriginal artist of my time. In 1957 I became the first Aboriginal person in the Northern Territory to be granted full citizenship, though I still could not own the land I painted. My paintings hang in every state gallery, and at Hermannsburg my family, the Hermannsburg School of painters, have carried on my way of painting the country for generations, keeping our story alive on the land where I was born.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today