Shared Experience:The billy boy
Dobell wrote of his model:
He was a Glasgow Irishman … his name was Joe Westcott. He was more interested in political argument than boiling the billy – which was his only job. Whenever we were waiting for our tea at morning or afternoon smoko, Joe, a dinkum bush lawyer, was trying to shout someone else down in an earbashing contest, and we often had to boil our own billy. I painted him at Rathmines Air Base, where I worked on camouflage with Joshua Smith and a lot of other artists.
Paintings
- Corvette Galley
Leonard Brooks - Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
Mervyn Peake - Parachute Riggers
Paraskeva Clark - Sections of buoyancy tank and floating caissons, Sydney graving dock
Herbert McClintock - No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
Sybil Craig - Working in the snow, Australian Forestry Unit, Scotland
Sheila Hawkins - Hull Riveting
Frederick B. Taylor - ATS at Work
Rodrigo Moynihan - The Camouflage Workshop, Leamington Spa, 1940
Edwin La Dell - The Merchant Navy: The chain-locker
Henry Carr - Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps
Molly Lamb Bobak - Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring
Dame Laura Knight - The billy boy
William Dobell - Transport driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles)
Nora Heysen - Weighing Down The Tail, New Brunswick
Moses Reinblatt - Patients waiting Outside a First Aid Post in a Factory
Ruskin Spear