Simple Wonders: Exhibition of the Paintings from the Collection of Andrew Johns Part Thirteen: Dick Roughsey "Goobalathaldin", Jason Barwick & John Santry

Dick Roughsey (c. 1920 – 1985) was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Lardil language group on Mornington Island in the south-eastern Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland. His tribal name was Goobalathaldin, meaning “the ocean, dancing”, describing a “rough sea”. He was an active and prominent figure involved in reviving and preserving the cultural life of the Lardil people. His best known works are a series of children's picture books that retell traditional Aboriginal stories including “The Rainbow Serpent”.¹

Growing up on an island, the sea was an essential feature of Goobalathaldin's world and the lives of the Lardil people.

Aged about 8, Goobalathaldin was taken into the children’s dormitory at the Mornington Island Presbyterian Mission and given the name Dick... Educated at the mission school until he was 13 or 14, Dick was sent to work as a stockman on southern Gulf of Carpentaria cattle stations. He also went out bush, learning to hunt and fish in the traditional way...².

With his wife Elsie William they lived in a bark house in the mission village and Roughsey worked as a deckhand on board boats servicing Gulf settlements. Always popular with his kin, he took on the kathin-kathin role of public jester. He made boomerangs and didgeridoos and painted barks for sale to tourists.²

In the 1960s Roughsey and his elder brother Lindsay (Burrud) initiated a style of bark painting depicting Lardil sacred histories on cross-hatched and pointillist backgrounds. It was gradually adopted by many local artists living at the Mornington mission and became known as the Wellesley region art movement. Roughsey became friendly with an airline pilot, Percy Trezise, who encouraged him in his bark painting and provided him with commercial art materials that helped him adopt a finer technique. He developed a second style of Mornington Island art, depicting scenes of both mission and Lardil ways of life, for example, water-lily harvests and dugong feasts. His paintings, often signed Goobalathaldin, were exhibited at Cairns, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.²

Founding chairman (1973-76) of the Australian Council for the Arts’s Aboriginal Arts Board, Roughsey served (1974-75) on the council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. In 1977 he addressed the World Wilderness Congress in Johannesburg, South Africa, making special reference to the cultural heritage of Cape York. He was appointed OBE in 1978. Although in his later years he suffered increasingly from eye disease, which affected the clarity of his painting, he never stopped working. He died of cancer on 20 October 1985 at Mornington Island and was buried in the local cemetery. His wife and their daughter and five of their six sons survived him. His paintings are represented in many Australian and international collections.²

You can read more about Dick Roughsey - "Goobalathaldin" by clicking here.

And there should not be an exhibition on the Simple Wonders of the Australian Landscape without the inclusion of the iconic figure of the drover's wife immortalised by Henry Lawson in his short story of that same name and more recently in 2021 brought into the C21st in a film.

From Andrew's collection we have two wonderful paintings by Jason Barwick which capture the essence of this courageous figure from the early days of European settlement in outback Australia - and whose descendants remain as significant members of rural communities.

Time passed and Australia gradually became urbanised as the early European settlements formed into towns, cities and eventually the several thriving metropolis we know today. John Santry's Early Sydney Town (below) reminds us of this journey through a scene of aging structures of Early Sydney Town (below).

John Santry (1910-1990) also known as Terence John Santry, T. J. Santry, Jack Santry was mid 20th century Sydney painter, illustrator and cartoonist. Santry taught drawing to Architecture students at Sydney University, which may have come from his association with Lloyd Rees as part of the Northwood Group.³

Again, you can read more about the career of this artist by clicking here

<sup>Credit
1. en.wikipedia.org
2. adb.anu.edu.au/biography/roughsey-dick-goobalathaldin
3. daao.org.au/bio/terence-john-santry/biography/</sup>