Station Days : Mervyn Street: Early Days Labour Working People
Past exhibition
Mervyn Street Australian, Gooniyandi, b. 1950
Early Days People, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 120 cm
833907
'Old people moved around never staying in once place. They woke with the birds. They never knew about work only looking around hunting, getting up early always looking for food....
"Old people moved around never staying in once place. They woke with the birds. They never knew about work only looking around hunting, getting up early always looking for food. It was a big job to find food to survive. These days there is a supermarket but they would have to walk a long way to look for food with no shoes just bare foot. At night they camped in caves or might have to make a shelter. They stayed to their language areas an respected each others land. That is how old people used to live in the bush. They had to make their own tools to hunt and they had never seen white colour of skin or all those animals such as cows, nanny goat, chickens or sheep. They lived on Goanna, snake, kangaroo, bush turkey and bush tucker. When they got sick they had their own medicine or would go to a special healing place, not a hospital. They knew where to find water in the summer and winter they might follow the animals to help lead them to water. This is also how I grew up before I was a stockman."