Beerbee Mungnari

Age : 72 years Language : Kija Sub Section : Joongoorra

The son of Ngarinman people, Beerbee ( pron Birribee) was born on Waterloo cattle station, on the Northern Territory side of the border with Western Australia, and as his father did before him, spent many years as a ringer, (cowboy) on nearby Rosewood and Kildurk Stations, taking part in many two-week cattle drives from the Territory, via the old Ord River Stock Route, to the slaughtering facility at the port of Wyndham, where the meat was processed for the hamburger market in America. When the Ord was dammed in 1966, most of the country that Beerbee knew and loved from those drives, became the bottom of Lake Argyle, the largest body of water within Australia. These lost places feature in many of his works.

So impressed was he with his young stockman, that Jack Kilfoyle, the legendary owner of Rosewood, made provision for the family trust company to make investments on Beerbee’s behalf, and to this day he receives regular small dividends resulting from that arrangement. 
In the last years before the Aboriginal station hand’s pay dispute and subsequent expulsion of the people from their traditional lands, Beerbee lived and worked on Texas Downs cattle station, on the south-western side of Lake Argyle, and west of the border.

Frog Hollow, a tiny community to the south of Texas Downs, is where Beerbee lives with his large family, with several children and grandchildren attending school there. 
 
Medium : Paintings, natural ochres (pigments) on canvas, acrylic fixative.      

Click here to see more artists.