This treasure is being featured in 50 Treasures Revisited – Celebrating 50 Years of James Cook University, which is on display at the Cairns Museum from 24 June to 28 October 2023. The exhibition is a collaboration between Cairns Museum and JCU Library, featuring 17 of the 50 Treasures from JCU Library Special Collections which most resonate with Far North Queensland.
Our thirty-seventh treasure comes from an Australian Aboriginal artist from Mornington Island who was actively involved in reviving and preserving the cultural life of the Lardil people. From the JCU Art Collection comes an Untitled bark painting by Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey.
Bruce Johnson McLean answers the question "why is this significant?"
I acknowledge the Lardil people and particularly the family of Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey as it is they to whom his narratives and history truly belong and matter most.
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| Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey, Untitled, unknown date, pigment on bark, 62 x 37 cm. James Cook University Art Collection. ©Dick Roughsey/Copyright Agency, 2019. Photograph by Michael Marzik. |
Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey was a trailblazing Queensland artist whose works have become synonymous with Aboriginal culture, narrative and art for generations of Australians. Born in 1920 at Gara Gara (Karrakarra), a site on the coast of Mornington Island in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, Roughsey was a proud Lardil man whose bark paintings, printed literature and narrative story books took his people’s culture to the world. This bark painting is part of Roughsey’s narrative series ‘The coming of the Balamando People’, which chronicles the lives of the first ancestors who came from the west to settle the South Wellesley Islands, including Mornington Island.
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| Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey, photographer and date unknown, PT-2-47, Percy Trezise Archive, JCU Library Special Collections |
Goobalathaldin was born in the bush on his traditional land after his mother, Kuthakin (later Minnie), selected a birthing site, Gara Gara (Karrakarra), a small stretch of coast fringed with pandanus palms near Goobirah Point (Kupare). He was born when the fruit of the pandanus tree was ripe – around September. Traditionally, Lardil people would take the name of their birth site as their own, and Roughsey became Gara Gara for the first few years of his life (1). When he was a young child of around 8 years of age, he was taken to the newly established Presbyterian Mission dormitory. Around this time Roughsey was given the name ‘Dick’. His father’s names were Goobalathaldin (meaning ‘deep sea’), which Dick would inherit, and Kiwarbija, which translates loosely as ‘rough seas’ which was Anglicised to the surname ‘Roughsey’ (2).
After finishing school, Roughsey found work throughout the Gulf of Carpenteria. While working as a yardman at Karumba Lodge on the mainland coast of the south-eastern Gulf, he met a pilot by the name of Percy Trezise, who Roughsey first spotted painting a mermaid on the bottom of the lodge’s pool. Together the two would form a lifelong relationship and Trezise often gave prescient critical and technical advice; and assisted with materials and the logistics of exhibiting works in galleries thousands of kilometres away.
The narrative shown in this bark painting follows the story of Marnbil, the young warrior leader of the group, his wife Gin Gin and her uncle Dewalewul. These three immortals travelled throughout the islands, with their marks on the land creating eternal monuments. They created and named the animals, built the first rock-walled fish traps and dug wells which filled with fresh water, sustaining life for thousands of years to come. On the last day of their creative journey the three split up, Marnbil travelling to Bountiful Island to dig a well there, while his wife stayed close to camp, digging for tubers and roots to feed the group. Dewalewul, who had travelled to Turtle Island finished early and returned to camp to find Gin Gin alone, preparing the tubers and pandanus nuts by the fire. Dewalewul seduced Gin Gin, however Marnbil
soon returned from his travel and caught sight of the two. Disgusted and heart broken, he snuck up behind them and speared Dewalewul who spun around in pain, creating a circle of raised dirt – the first Bora or ceremonial ground. Dewalewul then rose into the sky and chose to die, cursing Marnbil, Gin Gin and all those who would descend from them to mortality. Today, remains of the three can be found in a reef off the coast of Mornington Island which has a group of sharp rocky spikes, the mineralised legs of the ancestors, jutting out from atop the reef. This monument is an enduring reminder of Lardil laws and protocols surrounding marriage and social relationships as well as the creation of the physical and cultural landscape of the islands (3).
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| A selection of books written by Percy Trezise and Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey from the North Queensland Collection. Photograph by Michael Marzik. |
Roughsey was well known for his almost comic book-like narrative storyboard painting style. In his earliest works the elements were sequential, showing the episodes of a narrative from top to bottom, left to right like a book – techniques that would prove useful in his later narrative story books. However, here Roughsey has switched the sequence– the three ancestors travelling to Mornington Island on a Lardil log raft is seen bottom left, where in earlier works this introductory image would be seen at the top of a painting. In later bark paintings, such as this, the striking image of the reef, with the legs of the three ancestors rising above were positioned centrally to create a more aesthetically dynamic composition. This speaks to Roughsey’s desire to not only tell his cultural narratives authentically, but to create compelling images too.
In his time, Goobalathaldin’s works would find a level of acclaim which saw him become the inaugural Chair of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council, alongside many of the greats of Aboriginal art and literature, and be awarded an OBE. Although Roughsey’s story books have retained an iconic place in Australian culture, for many years his art all but disappeared from public view. But recently there has been a reconsideration of Goobalathaldin’s work as it begins to be revised, reappreciated, re-loved and treasured again.
Over the course of 2020, JCU Library's Special Collections unveiled
50 Treasures from the collections to celebrate 50 years of James Cook
University.
JCU Library is fortunate to have collections of unique and rare resources — including artworks — of regional and national significance, describing life in the tropics. We hope you are inspired to explore further by visiting all of our digital treasures and their stories at NQHeritage@JCU.
References
(1) Memmott, Paul. ‘Tradition and homelessness amongst Indigenous Australians’ p.62-64. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/23210039/Differing_Relations_to_Tradition_amongst_Australian_Indigenous_Homeless_People accessed 24.1.2019
(2) Memmott, Paul. ‘Origins of the contemporary art movement’ in ‘Heart of Everything: The art and artists of Mornington & Bentinck Islands’. P.18.
(3) Many versions of this story have been told by Goobalathaldin, including in his biography ‘Moon and Rainbow’. This version is drawn from his biography and notes adhered to the verso of three other works Roughsey produced during the period this work was painted. This work has no story adhered to the verso.
Author Biography
Bruce Johnson McLean (formerly QAGOMA's Curator of Indigenous Australian Art) is the National Gallery of Australia's inaugural Assistant Director of Indigenous Engagement.
Bruce has curated (amongst others): 2020's Mavis Ngallametta: Show Me the Way to Go Home; 2019-20's I, Object; 2018's Tony Albert: Visible; 2016's Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori: Dulka Warngiid – Land of All; and 2010's Joe Rootsey: Queensland Aboriginal Painter 1918-63.
A songman, dancer and didgeridoo player, in 2002 Bruce was awarded the NAIDOC National Aboriginal Youth of the Year.
Bruce is a member of the Wierdi (Wirri) people of the Birri Gubbi nation of Wribpid (central Queensland).
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