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Artworks
Kathy Ramsay
Greenvale, 2020Ochre, acrylic pigment and synthetic binder on canvas90 x 120 cm
35 3/8 x 47 1/4 inCopyright The Artist'This is that Greenvale place again. That Garrganny place. The most important part he turn into rock like Ngarranggarni (dreaming). They got them black thing that hang off the tree,..."This is that Greenvale place again. That Garrganny place. The most important part he turn into rock like Ngarranggarni (dreaming).
They got them black thing that hang off the tree, you can see them on that white tree, what you call em? Like them galyuwin thing, the bloodwood sap.
The anthills there, big mob of them out there."
"Bow River is our land, our traditional country, it's where all my old people belong, I know that because of passing down stories from my mum.
I was born there in 1965. It was really like being in the bush all the time, we didn't know anything about white people really, we used to live on kangaroo meat, my ganggayi [matrilineal grand-father] used to go up the hill, he made a trap for kangaroo and he got one red one, big kangaroo and we eat meat from kangaroo and used to feed us on goat milk, and I used to be riding on a mule too.
I wasn't so big, I was only small, me and my brother used to go anywhere, riding goats, a nanny goat threw me over the fence. We drifting around, chasing all the turkeys, they like hen, like laying egg and we go poke them and they chase me and peck me all around.
My father was a good horse-breaker, my grand-father taught him too, once that old fella died from Greenvale. All mob he told the Lily family to bring them over to Bow River to live. My family was all stock people, working for, not bad, gardiya [white people], they was good people. Because these gardiya, they looked after my family because my family knew the country well and told them not to go places where there is ngarranggarni p[dreaming] - they sacred sites at the back, lot of people don't know that."