Paddy Cooley (Quilty) Story / Emu Dreaming

Place Oceania: Australia, Western Australia, Kimberley
Accession Number AWM2019.413.1
Collection type Art
Measurement Unframed: 120.2 cm x 160.2 cm x 2.5 cm
Object type Painting
Physical description natural earth pigments and synthetic binder on linen
Maker Bedford, Paddy
Place made Australia: Western Australia, Wyndham
Date made 1998
Copyright

Item copyright: AWM Licensed copyright

Description

After a lifetime in the saddle working as a stockman on the cattle station in the eastern Kimberley whose name he bears, Paddy Bedford [Jawalyi] (Gija, 1922-2007) commenced painting in the public sphere at the age of 76 when he joined Freddie Timms and other Gija painters in the Jirrawun Art collective. 'Paddy Cooley (Quilty) Story / Emu Dreaming' is of a massacre of a number of his relatives on Bedford Downs that took place only two or so years before he was born. The Bedford Downs Massacre is one of many that occurred from the time of the first gold rush in the Kimberley, in the 1880s, and continued through the establishment of the pastoral industry in the region up to the 1920s.

According to Gija oral history, the Bedford Downs massacre was instigated by the manager of station, Paddy Quilty (aka Cooley). A number of Aboriginal men were ordered to cut fire wood and stack the logs in piles. Once done, the men were fed beef and damper laced with strychnine. Many died quickly. Those that were writhing in pain were shot. One young lad escaped. The bodies of the dead were placed upon the wood piles which were set alight.

In this painting, the pyres appear as the two yellow ochres circles in the top right. The circle below represents the place from which women witnessed the burning stacks. The place where these events occurred is Kananganja (Mount King), close to a major Gija Emu Dreaming site, indicated by the white speck towards the left centre of the composition. In the ancestral drama, the Emu (pictured below left) got wedged in a cleft in a gorge. The painting also depicts the track leading to Paddy Quilty’s station house.

Paddy Bedford was born around 1922 at Bedford Downs cattle station. In common with most Aboriginal men of his generation, Bedford grew up and worked as a stockman on a number of cattle stations but spent most of his life on Bedford Downs, as well as being employed for a time as a road builder for the Western Australian Main Roads Department. Throughout this time he participated in traditional Gija Law and Ceremony, in which he became a Senior Law man. In the 1970s Paddy Bedford and other Gija were forced off the station, and eventually settled at Warmun (Turkey Creek).