Travelling With Ben Quilty

The artist on the lure of the Western Desert, the world through a child’s eyes, and the inspiration of Beirut.

- Helen Anderson

When I was 19 I left art school for a year.

I was pretty off the rails. A mate and I took an old Commodore station wagon and travelled around Australia. He had a book of Pitjantjatjara language, which we were trying to learn around campfires at night. One night in Cairns we met a young man who told us we’d already travelled through 60 different Aboriginal language groups. I realised at that point I knew nothing about my own country. When we came back I enrolled in Aboriginal culture and history at Monash University.

I ran out of money by the time we got to Darwin so I went looking for work. You’d stand around the local CES office in the morning, they’d read out the jobs and people would put up their hand. One morning they asked if anyone was a painter. I think half a degree at Sydney College of the Arts was worth putting my hand up for. I got the job and flew to Elcho Island, off north-east Arnhem Land, where I worked for a month as a house painter. I learned about the vibrancy of that community and the racial divide between the men I worked with and the people who lived there.

I’ve been travelling to the APY lands [the Aboriginal local government area in central Australia] every six months or so for years. It’s all permit country – you need to be invited there. Most recently I headed out through Kintore, in the far west of the Northern Territory, to Kiwirrkurra, a tiny community in WA in the heart of the Pintupi homelands.