The ochre paintings of Rover Thomas occupy a special place in contemporary
Aboriginal painting. Despite their apparent simplicity, Thomas's work captures the essence of
the East Kimberley landscape in both a topographical and spiritual sense. While
incorporating in his works specific references to river beds, dirt tracks, local valleys, hills and
cattle station homesteads, the paintings are usually underpinned with spiritual values -
throughout his painting career Thomas has depicted aspects of the landscape that are imbued
with profound mythological significance.
The Kimberley region is located in the northern part of Western Australia. This
rugged and spectacular area - which encompasses some 422,000 square kilometres - is still
comparatively inaccessible. The west and north are bound by sea, while the central
Kimberley is characterised by high, flat, sandstone plateaus and deep ravines. The eastern
edge is demarcated by the Ord River, while in the south lie the seemingly endless undulating
sandhills of the Great Sandy Desert.
The northwest and central Kimberley is the land of the Wandjina spirit beings -
mysterious ancestral figures from time immemorial that can be found in many locations
inscribed on rock faces - but in the East Kimberley, around Warmun (Turkey Creek) the
balga or public ceremonies have given rise to a more recent tradition of ochre painting. The
rectangular boards used in the ceremonies are painted in earth pigments and depict ancestral
beings or sites of spiritual significance, and the local artists have now transposed these
themes to large works on board, paper and canvas. Many of the artists at Warmun are Gija
people and include such painters as Jack Britten, Hector Jandany and Henry Wambiny - and
the late Queenie McKenzie . Like Rover Thomas they paint in ochres but, as art curator
Judith Ryan has observed, their crowded imagery, subdivisions and serpentine lines make a
strong contrast to the paintings of Rover Thomas, which are flatter, more 'minimalist' and
stripped of surface detail. In Thomas's work dots and ritual markings are less important - dots
being used primarily to delineate topographical features of the landscape.
Rover Thomas was born in 1926 at Gunawaggi - Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route
in the Great Sandy Desert - and was brought up by two Wangkajunga men, Lanikan Thomas
and Sundown. His mother was a Kukatja woman called Ngukuyipa, or Nita, and
consequently Thomas spoke both Kukatja and Wangkajunga languages. He belonged to the
Julama skin group, and although he was not Gija himself, like the other Warmun artists he
often painted the Gija country. When he was ten years old Thomas moved with his family to
Billiluna Station on Sturt Creek and here he trained to be a jackaroo. Later he worked as a
stockman on several other cattle stations in the Kimberley - at Bow River, Texas Downs,
Lissadell and Mabel Downs - and he also worked for a time as a fencing contractor in
Wyndham. It was at Texas Downs Station that he met his second wife, Rita - a Gija woman.
Thomas had grown up in an Aboriginal community which had only recently
established regular contact with white Australians - usually sheep or cattle farmers or people
involved in the mining industry. When Thomas first worked as a stockman it was customary
for the Aboriginal workers to speak to the white station managers in a type of
English/Aboriginal creole (kriol). Stockmen like Rover Thomas were culturally isolated on
the stations but nevertheless it was at Billiluna Station, some time during the period of the
Second World War, that he received his initiation into traditional tribal law. Fortunately,
Aboriginal workers were still able to perform their ceremonial practices despite the
constrictions of working on the cattle stations.