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Lost. Found. Returned: Dr. Jason Gibson on the Birrundudu drawings

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The Nugget
October 17, 2025

★ Lost. Found. Returned: Dr. Jason Gibson on the Birrundudu drawings ★

Dr. Jason Gibson with Anmatyerr men.

Castlemaine is one of those towns where you trip over people with wild claims to fame at Landcare, Park Run and the grocery store, because they are everywhere here.

Famous authors and musicians, people with PhDs and big stage Ted talks. They are just part of the local woodwork.

Dr. Jason Gibson is one of these "random" (as my kid would say) local super stars. He's got a new book out, and I'm busting to tell you about it.

The Birrundudu Drawings, by Jay and five colleagues -- John Carty, Alistair Paterson, Luke Scholes, Jessyca Hutchens, Stephen Gilchrist -- changes the accepted history of Australian art.

The story started when Jay was poking around a museum in Perth with Dr. Vanessa Russ and found 810 crayon works on brown paper, in a drawer.

The Birrundudu Drawings had been tucked away in the personal collection of anthropologist Ronald Berndt for 80 years.

“We came across the Birrundudu materials and we both sort of shrugged our shoulders and said, ‘We don’t know anything about this. No one knows about this. There needs to be a project on this.’”

Jay went back home to Chewton, where he lives with his wife, Ada, and their son, Arthur, to start making phone calls.

"I spent time in the related communities asking, 'What do you think of these drawings? And what should we do? What sort of project would we have about returning these drawings to the community?' And that's how it all started," Jay says.

Unearthing the history of the Birrundudu Drawings turned into a five-year, 20,000-kilometre journey across the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

The team drove massive loops around the Tanami Desert visiting communities and meeting with people from multiple cultural groups: Jaru, Walmajarri, Warlpiri, Kukatja, Gurindji and more, trying to find people connected to the Birrundudu artists.

"I have to emphasize, we didn't really know who these men were who made the drawings," Jay says. "They had very obscure names in the documentation, like Nipper or Mick, so it was very hard.

"I think, for at least, I'd say 80% of the individual drawers, we've found their family. The other ones, we've found enough information on them to give you a bit of a biography of who they were."

In 1945, the drawers were "working" as stockmen for the Vestey Corporation under harsh, exploitative conditions. They didn't really get paid, and when they did, it was in meagre rations.

Ronald and Catherine Berndt, who were both anthropologists, were on the Vestey station to document the working conditions and report to the government.  

"But they were persuaded by their mentor and those above them not to release this report," Jay says.

"I think they felt like they'd let people down and they held onto these drawings in their home, not wanting them to be public until they were ready. They wrote about the exploitation in 1985 -- 40 years later -- once their mentor had passed away."

The drawings were created by fluke. Ronald ran out of film for his camera. He had been sitting with the stockmen where they were camped. The men had taken him in and trusted him, allowing Berndt to take photographs of ceremonies, write down song verses and record a huge amount of detail.

When the film ran out, the men offered to make drawings for him. Berndt's father sent lumber crayons and brown paper from Adelaide.

"The men just took to this medium with so much gusto. They produced 810 drawings in three months," Jay says.

"We were able to unearth photographs of the men in action as they were producing these artworks and they're all sort of seated in a circle, all discussing the content and drawing together and look like they were having a great time sharing information and stories with each other."

The drawings tell a story, and it's not the story you might expect, given there wasn't enough food and people were starving.

"It's interesting. They're not telling a story of exploitation in their drawings. They're using this as an opportunity to tell their story. To tell about their culture," Jay says.

"There are drawings of a plethora of different ceremonies that the men had learnt throughout their lives, there are drawings of sites, mountain ranges, rivers. They're drawing Country, they're drawing ceremony, and enmeshed in all of that, of course, is this incredible knowledge of the non-human entities, birds and animals and other entities. Just this tapestry of rich cultural knowledge."

Many of these drawings are reproduced in the book, The Birrundudu Drawings (available at Stoneman's BTW).

The paper stock is perfect - not glossy, allowing the drawings to seep into the paper. Ronald Berndt's extensive notes share the meaning and stories of the drawings.

The book also contains essays from descendants of the artists who share their response to seeing their great-great grandfather or their fathers fathers' drawings for the first time.

"These drawings were locked away forever until this project came along and when we first showed the drawings to people, they were shocked," Jay says.

That's because the Birrundudu drawings have redrawn the timeline of Australian art.

“You can see great resonances with the acrylic paintings that are produced today with many of the designs and stories that you see in these crayon drawings from 1945, which is remarkable because we thought that the story of acrylic painting in the desert started in the early 1970s.

"But this is 25 years before that, so this opens a new chapter in the story of art history in Australia," Jay says.

Boom. Hair blown back.

The drawings are both an extraordinary artistic record, and also a once-hidden part of Australia’s story.

❀ Halloween Eve Fundraiser ❀

This. Is. Going. To. Be. Fun.

The Theatre Royal is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a special screening the night before Halloween.

It’s a fundraising fiesta to help get our fave MZ Crew to the Gold Coast for the finals of the Hollywood Bound Dance Comp.

The night will feature local personalities, live performances, goody bags, audience participation and 15-minute tarot readings from 5:00 PM. My tix are booked. See yas there. xo

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

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