Maggie Green

“[I was] born on station, Myroodah Station, Derby side. My mother and father, granddad, grandmother, uncles, aunties, we all been grew up there. I been going to school there. Working in the house, cooking, go for hunting. [My family] always took us out for bush tucker, fishing.  Me and my mum we been cooking for station owner Charles Lanigan, and Mary, his daughter. Always work on the station; clean up, cooking, washing. Everybody got to get up early, go to school there. That’s my home. We all been there, we get big there. Get all the eggs from the chickens, milk the nanny goat, mop the floor, make bed, wash all the sheets. We didn’t go to Derby school. Mr Lanigan said you go to school here. Going mustering my dad, my mum did the cooking. Mr Lanigan always took us to Derby for shopping, then take us back to Myroodah station, Martu station. Family all in Looma, all the Greens. Big mob us Greens.”

Maggie, a Mangala woman based in Port Hedland, paints about her childhood; the station where she grew up, went to school, and worked; the dam she visited for fishing and swimming; and the bush tucker she collected and hunted for. Her mother is frequently referred to in the stories associated with her artwork, as are then Myroodah Station Manager Mick, and teacher Mary, Lannigan. Maggie also fondly remembers the friends she grew up with on the station, with whom she would ‘run amok’. Maggie began painting with her mother and grandmother at Myroodah Station; “We start doing painting on Myroodah Station. My mum and my grandmother teaching us doing painting for us. That’s how we were learning dot paint.”