Jumuluny Boab Tree at Mistake Creek

Places
Accession Number AWM2018.706.1
Collection type Art
Measurement Sheet: 32.5 x 49 cm
Object type Print
Physical description etching on paper
Maker Purdie, Shirley
Place made Australia: Western Australia, Warmun
Date made 2008
Conflict Period 1910-1919
Copyright

Item copyright: AWM Licensed copyright

Description

'Jumuluny Boab Tree at Mistake Creek' is an account of frontier conflict from an Indigenous perspective. Shirley Purdie has depicted the Mistake Creek boab tree that is the site of the 1915 Mistake Creek Massacre, where up to eight Gija people were murdered. It is a powerful record of frontier conflict known to her through enduring histories of the East Kimberley. By depicting such massacres, Purdie, like her forbears Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas, has intended to create historical records of events that went unreported but had been passed down through oral tradition.

The Mistake Creek Massacre happened on Gija land: an Aboriginal man from another part of Australia (sometimes assumed to have come from Darwin), had come to Gija Country to work for the Rhatigan family and he fell in love with some of the married Gija women. The women refused his advances, so the man lied to Mr Rhatigan and told him that the Gija mob had killed his cow. Wild and mad, the Aboriginal man and Mr Rhatigan rode out to Mistake Creek where the Gija people were camped and began shooting them dead. Nearly everyone died. Rhatigan uncovered their cooking pot after the massacre and found only kangaroo and echidna inside, and realised that he had been lied to. Rhatigan killed the Aboriginal man and was taken to court but his charges were dropped due to the fact that he had been tricked.

The modern history of the Kimberley is fresh in the mids of those of Purdie's generation; they have either lived through it or learned it directly from their forebears. Although there is no doubt that the massacre happened, the history of the event is furiously contested and notably in 2012, the National Museum of Australia purchased Queenie McKenzie's depiction of the event, thus cementing the cultural significance of this event within Australian warfare history.

Purdie was born in 1947 and has been painting for more than twenty years. She is an artist of increasing significance and seniority. She is a prominent leader in the Warmun community and her cultural knowledge combined with her art practice compliments each other to produce works that hold great strength and cultural importance. Purdie was taught to paint by her mother, Madigan Thomas, as well as from her good friends and mentors, Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas. Much of what she paints are places on Country that are significant to Gija people. Colonial histories of the region also feature in her work and she recounts stories of early contact, massacres, warfare and indentured labour since pastoralists arrived into Gija land in the late 1880’s. Purdie won the 2007 Blake Prize for Religious Art and has exhibited nationally since 1994. Her work is held in private collections nationally and internationally, including the Kerry Stokes Collection.