"That's it, that's the story"
I walked into Cooee shop not knowing whether Clifford Possum was there. I knew he was coming to Sydney & I'd heard that he'd be at the opening the night before. But he wasn't there, the night before there seemed to be no opening when we arrived. But there was word that after one Clifford would be painting in the gallery. Anyway I walked in & I saw someone out of the corner of my eye looking at me with a big smile on his face. As a small kid a few weeks later was to say "so this is the great man, wow."
We shook hands. 'How long are you here for" I said, "one day" came the reply. "One day!" I was about to say when I realised Clifford thought I'd said "how long have you been here". But then I wasn't sure. Perhaps Clifford was playing on the ambiguity of his position & he intended leaving after one day, perhaps he was just assuming that I was more interested in the fact that he was here, & more eager to meet him again than to know when he was leaving.
He was in Sydney with daughter Gabriella her son Jimbo and Lilly Cambell, a friend of Gabriella's. There painting in the Gallery was the result of Joy Aitkins.
The man is a power unto himself - he negotiates his own actions so once he was here in Sydney I knew that the dreaming would return to me. It's something to do with focusing closer to the event horizon - of waiting till events are clear - until purpose is true, a kind of sussing out the meaning of intentions and assessing their purpose through assessment of their finest implications within the intentions. So the birds began to fly around me again, the trees to direct & talk to me the clouds to look like ancestors, serpents, animals, birds. Once more I was synchronised with my world - with nature.
Multiple personality who acquiesces & manifests as the appropriate performer. Stories are chosen to suit the seriousness of events.
We stood & talked a bit then looked at the show then came back & stood across the room from Clifford. He came across to the other side of the room & began looking through the Dreaming book, flicking through the pages & holding up the fire dreaming that I had sold to S.A. Art Gallery a few years ago, the maroon one with the skeletons of the two brothers who died in the fire. I was careful to remain a little distanced. Then after looking away I looked back & he was standing next to me.
"How are you Japaltjari" (I've been given a skin name that makes me a classificatory brother to Clifford) "Okay" I said, "struggling on". He seemed to think this was all right - represented a truthful answer. Then he said "did you hear what happened to me last night. "No" I said, "What?" He kept looking at me deep into my eyes. "You didn't come because of that". "No, we just came to see you", said Vivien. He kept staring, fighting back tears, squinting his eyes till the deep emotions were under control. We gave him our phone number and left.
We never found out what happened but assumed it was to do with the opening of the exhibition. Later I heard they'd gone to the Hogarth Gallery opening. Vivien thought Clifford might have been upset at the opening. After something that had happened earlier in Alice Springs where he had been stabbed in the groin & seriously ill in hospital, anything was possible. His leg was still pretty bad & he had to make trips to the doctor at the hospital that afternoon & the next morning.
[Neon photography]
That was Thursday and we found he was going to paint in the gallery for about a week. He'd bought down about 4 canvases with the designs already painted & him Gabrielle & Lily were going to dot them. The next morning we came back to see them. Clifford was sitting on the first picture he'd started - a kangaroo dreaming.
"You still painting" he asked. "Yes" I said. "You got any of that gold paint? Cause I want to put gold all around" says Clifford showing me the areas to be filled on the canvas. He wanted to mix it in with the other colours. Later when I gave him the paint he mixed some with each colour giving them an iridescent glow. The painting was sold a day or two later.
It seemed like Clifford & Gabriella who had accompanied them from Alice Springs acting as a kind of manager would be here for at least a week & so I thought Clifford would probably like to come back to my place. I dropped in on late Friday afternoon when he was working out the back of the gallery but he wasn't very talkative. Gabriella gave us a Christmas card with Clifford on it & I gave them a copy of my tape that Clifford later played.
On Saturday Vivien went down to the gallery to take Gabriella shopping. She'd offered to do that on Friday. About an hour after she'd left Gabriella rang. Just before that Frank had knocked at the door. After the phone call from Gabriella he was rather more respectful. Amy Gabriella gave me their address and it turned out to be Catherine st Leichart, close to where I live & just down the road from the Mori Gallery where I exhibit. She told me that "the old man" - Clifford, was painting in the back yard of the hostel.
Anyway Vivien came back went out and took them shopping. Gabriella was waiting even though she didn't arrive till a couple of hours later " I knew you'd come" she said.
By Sunday I was feeling disorientated because I'd hoped to ask Clifford to lunch at my parents place and to show him the paintings at my place. As the day went on I started thinking that I wouldn't see Clifford again before he went back & I had the feeling that I shouldn't bother him. A big storm came up that night, it was as if I could see the ancestral forces at work. Alienation. the subjugation of my own feelings, all seemed to make way for the forces of nature to act. I could almost see the rainbow serpent up in the clouds, hear voices in the wind and sense the way my static world was susceptible to the throes of change. During that storm lightening struck Center point. (Only the 2nd time it had happened according to the article that accompanied it). That night we all called in at the hotel to visit them. Clifford was sitting painting on the floor of his motel room. The first thing he said was. "I lost your telephone number". "I was going to ring you but I lost the number.
He seemed to be in a world of deep feelings where everything was ponderous and poignant - the burden of the gap between his world and mine when crossed created real pleasure - but he was rarely able to get across. His thoughts were to quick to translate into English & his silences to doom laden to exist in the bland consumerist trappings of our world. I really felt he could be here in Sydney, without hiding, but most of his problems were from Alice Springs. It was if I could only give him false hope by representing my world in a favourable light.
He especially made time for my two children, called them little Nungarai & as usual called when Lou came to Unbungera in 1980 - just a baby - the time when - as he put it , I was painting that round kangaroo painting (for her).
He seems to be from another world even though he's here now in this one. It's as if I have to remember that he's different. I don't want to emphasise difference but unless I can accept it & understand it then we can't communicate. But we do communicate, even with silence in fact especially in silence. It seems that only in silence can the deepest feelings be acknowledged. We sit there. I take a place on the floor of the motel where it's indicated I can sit - Communication is non verbal & takes the form of sign language. Then thoughts take over. Whatever I think seems to hang against a void a space when it is interpreted from the view point of the gravity & seriousness of the problems that confront all Aboriginal people.
I think something half enlightened & I hear "mm" from Clifford or I think something else, perhaps self critical & he might look up, catch my eyes for a moment. My place in his presence is somehow on the line. He takes much longer to do single things - not because he is slow, not because he is procrastinating but because he is not convinced of the validity of doing them & because things are done within the context of meaning of his society.
During that visit we bought the first small picture they'd done in Sydney. It was the only money they had coming through from sales and a few days later Gabriella rang us up again saying they were again short of cash & could we buy the next one as well. Both these pictures had designs by Clifford and dots by Gabriella & Lily.
The painting with the snake was Jakamara and Clifford said it was painted because Lily was old Mick Jakamara's grand daughter & the thought that went into choosing that dreaming was related to Lily's presence in Sydney - the feeling being that it would invoke the ancestors.
He said for example if there was no rain, the water man would hold a ceremony. Get the right ochre, crush it up & throw it (little humps of white frozen...) in the air & it would rain. And he gave another example of a report coming over the radio of a thunderstorm with a flood and how Johnny Wrangula broke a branch off a witchity bush waved it at the sky and the clouds backed off.
Clifford talked about the things worrying him "painting, painting, always painting no matter where he goes, they look for him.
The next morning I called in again. Clifford was working on the next painting. The two snakes who crossed Napperby lakes. He was sitting out the front of the Tony Mundine Hostel doing the dots. It was a beautiful painting with the grey lake, the snakes hole in the centre - an abandoned rabbit hole and black shapes along the sides. He talked softly about the story but the picture looked dark & intense, the snakes all black, the clouds down the sides all black and Clifford himself still wearing his Alice Springs clothes. I told Steve Mori that Clifford was just down the road & he called to say hello with Steve Smith.
Later that night we were talking to Clifford & Joy when Vivien noticed Steve's card on the desk. We talked to Clifford about the visit and he stroked his own beard as a way of describing Steve's appearance. I thought from all this that Clifford might be interested in exhibiting at the Morri Gallery so invited him to go there in the week.
When we arrived this time Gabriella was out the front with the 2nd picture she wanted us to buy. They were getting a little dishearted that pictures weren't selling so well and we were called in to buy some of them. We talked about why Clifford had stayed up late the night before till 12 he told us - "half the dark time" he said "with the electric light". He seemed really pleased to be able to paint at night undisturbed and he had painted the design for the snake painting and was planning one more a big one he said to be of the two dancing men story.
When he arrived for this visit Clifford was out walking with Jimbo his grand son. He walked up quietly. "Hello Japuljari" he said then started telling me the story of the painting we were buying. "These ochres are all from my grandmothers country". He explained how we could get there and we'd see all these colours in the rocks. He talked about the surface of the picture - how smooth & regular it was in keeping with it's religious subject nature. The large snake travelling north was "beautiful & deadly" said Gabrielle, it was a visitor at the site on it's way north. The man was walking in on the right was Lumkata who lit the fire that killed the two sons who didn't share the kangaroo they caught and he was shown walking towards sacred dreaming boards. A bird that Clifford described as smaller than a bush turkey was shown coming into the site from the right.
The picture had details from 3 or 4 stories at a site just west of and "right along side" Wargulong the bush fire site. When he was describing it to me he acted out the details - really acted it pointing in front of him to show the protagonists in the story. Shadows, the steps, the walls of the motel became the backdrop for the awe and seriousness of the story.
When an artist paints a story it is a deeply felt memory of something very intense & sacred. As it is painted these factors are operative at the time & perhaps tied in with current events. In fact they are - even on the level of aiding survival. But later the deep memory of the events is easily submerged in new current events.
Always inside the room Gabriella said "my father wondered if he could visit your place". So we arranged it for the next morning. We arrived at about 9 to find Clifford dressed in new clothes ready to visit us. He stayed about 2 hours during which we showed him all the pictures we'd collected "You beat Papunya Tula" he said on viewing our room full of stored paintings and quietly surveyed them one by one. What he seemed to like most was the one by his "big brother", Tim Leura of the two dancing men. This painting, one of Tim Leura's last had to be finished by Clifford when Tim Leura had gone to hospital in Adelaide. He chuckled to himself for a long time about the two men in the pictures.
I showed him lots of things - the North American Indian Shields I'd brought, the Tibetan Thanks and so on and we spent the last hour or so looking through photos and books talking about his work and finding out various things, inaccuracies in various catalogue notes. He showed him a photo of lightning striking Centerpoint building in town. Clifford, one of his dreamings is the lightning dreaming, was fascinated by this image and said "somebody dead in that building". I said the electricity goes through a piece of metal to the ground. He said "must have been somebody bad there" and asked is there an art gallery there. (In fact the taxation office is in there).
During the following week Clifford finished the snake painting for which Joy couldn't find a buyer. She met resistance from some galleries to the idea that she was acting as an independent agent for Clifford. This ignored the fact that Clifford has since left the monopoly of the P.T.A. on his output and was selling work directly & to most of the shops and agencies in Alice Springs. It seemed that the Aboriginal market wasn't really able to adjust to the escalation in the value of Cliford's work - especially his early work. But in New York he was selling work for 20 or $30,000, at auction in Melbourne he was getting similar prices.
About Wednesday he began the last picture done in Sydney. I went down in the morning and he'd just painted the shield in the centre. He began touching it up at the edges & adjusting the shape by adding a few more dabs of paint to each colour. He explained how this was a picture of a shield as it would be decorated for the ceremony. The sun was coming across the picture, Clifford was sitting on the canvas. He took the stick for dotting up placed it in the centre of the circle in the shield. For a moment it was as if we were sitting there on either side of the actual shield. The stick look like ceremonial pole. He just held it there looking, thinking, planning the next stage of the painting. Every aspect was done with so much care - the colour for painting the design onto the painted image of the shield had to be a new colour. Clifford mixed up the red to the yellow ochres, producing a dusty orange.
After buying this painting when Vivien was taking Gabriella up to the Gallery to make a phone call, Clifford was going to walk up to were Gabriella was staying with husband to ask if Lily could stay there because there was a bit of disturbance during the night.
Gabriella suggested I walk up with Clifford. I suggested this but he was to proud. Gabriella insisted, I insisted so we set off for Selwins a block away. Clifford walked fast, right down the middle of the road. He waved an approaching car aside - it had to go round us. We talked about how even when he went bush everyone tracked him down to get paintings. But he seemed tense, frightened, sad & lost there in Leichart. Proud, able to cope with so many new experiences but with a different time sense. He could slow everything down, he could de-centre his self. He was able to wait while his world happen around him.
At Selingus we were invited in. Clifford introduced me and told me everyone there was his family. He has a way of standing very upright looking you in the eye with a quizzical expression catching your attention slowing down your sense of time. He introduced me as someone who'd been all around the Central Desert, Papunya, Kintore, Yuendumu, etc & as a friend since way back. There was a deep sense of the meaning and value of caring on a more intense level. Things like surprise, awe, engagement, interest - sometimes acted but still expressed seemed to dominate the evening.
We listened while Clifford told us about the stories, his painting techniques & the way all this related to his culture. There was an urgency in his community & it took as lot of intense response to stop Clifford from becoming to unsure of himself. Everyone was interested in what he was saying & people in the house were asking questions and trying to follow Clifford's ideas.
I think the de-centering of self that aboriginal culture seems to indicate is especially obvious with Clifford Possum. He seems almost to be encircled with various degrees of other selves & the emotions & involvements one finds most people have are de centered. He looks upset - & you hear a baby cry in the next room. He smiles & you hear laughter outside. It is as if all events are caused because they are connected.
It's about elevated states of consciousness, memory visualisation and using these to transform the present - represented by existence in the space you are in. This is done firstly with thought, then speech but also with body language. Memory is the area in which art & culture acts. It's about dealing with spirits in that space & memory space & privacy. It's also about attracting the significance of a value system to actions and to knowing the meaning of a kind of acquiescence that settles on common ground. But this acquiescence comes from shared experience of the power of knowledge about Aboriginal law in the nature of the Dreaming - Deeper emotional states, more lasting and enlightening emerge from acceptance of the values of Aboriginal lore. It's hard to describe or claim that a white person can participate in this but I've found it’s the only way to approach Clifford and other Aboriginal people who still live in a tribal society.
We left Selwins at about 11.30 am on the Friday night and on the Saturday morning I went down to take Clifford to the Mori Gallery. He was asleep so I lined it up for that afternoon. When we got there , Clifford went in ever so slowly - almost as if this was a momentous occasion. He stepped over the threshold so to speak and tested the space. He walked in and around the walls, not speaking, looking carefully at each painting - inspecting the sides of the canvas, & especially their surfaces feeling them with the palm of his hand - especially Sue Norrie's “have a rainbow day" Which had stencilled chequered shapes. I couldn't say exactly what Clifford was thinking - apart from that he may have been summing up in his mind how he would exhibit it there. Because he counted the large canvases, 1,2,3,4,5, as if to let me know that he could do it easily. He really seemed to like all the paintings - especially Mathias Gerber’s kitsch style painting - Sue and Jo both came up to meet him - he was all smiles & silence.
Then upstairs we looked at Helen Grace’s laser colour paints and when we got to a combination of prints he immediately pointed out the source of the enlarged prints - something I hadn't even noticed. Next came a cup of tea & biscuits with Jo & Clinton but once again he didn't say much. He carried on a silent conversation and looked through outlines of Australia art page by page starting with his own picture which we showed him. All the way through he pointed out Aboriginal references - a figure with a spear, a lonely figure with a dog on a road who's tiny head looked to me like ceremonial headdress. In fact all the paintings looked Aboriginal when viewed like this - with Clifford turning the pages.
All the abstract looked like Aboriginal designs to me and so many of the paintings contained images of or about Aboriginal people. Of one picture he said - what's this? That's the white people when they arrived here in Australia I said -"oh"- said Clifford and it looks like they're having a drink I said. It was interesting, it was like he was pointing something out to us.
Steve didn't turn up for some reason but Jo brought out a photo of Steve & Bob Hawke. Only Steve's hair was visible in a profile that looked exactly like Clifford's. Strange. Anyway after we got back to the Tony Mundine Hostel, Clifford wanted me to ring Charles Perkins and I drove Clifford & Joy over to his place in Darlinghurst. On the way we stopped at Grace Brothers for a shirt but couldn't really find one. There was one that believe it or not seemed to have adapted details from Clifford's own paintings on it. But after he had given it a bit of thought, he shook his head
Anyway Charles Perkins ushered Clifford through the gate then shut it saying I'll look after him now thank you very much. Then when I got home there was a bit of a drama going because a car had followed a kid down the street when he was coming to pick up his sister and apparently almost abducted him from our place. This was a terrible piece of news and I couldn't relate it to the events of the day at all, except that if we'd spent less time looking for the shirt we never brought or if I'd come straight back from dropping Clifford off, instead of dropping Joy off first, I'd have been home earlier and perhaps able to get the number of the car when the kid knocked on our door.
The next morning we called at about 12 and Clifford had the brown mixed ready to paint the two kangaroos given as payment in the ceremony. I thought about asking him to lunch - He looked at me & nodded. I brought it up there were the usual squinting glances and I noticed Clifford running his fingers from his shoes to his socks to his trousers. They were all clean and formal looking - shiny black shoes, grey socks, grey flannel trousers - probably a present from Charles Perking. I realised he was dressed up as if ready to go out. So off we went.
Clifford sat in the front seat watching it all - especially as we ascended the Gladesville bridge - he looked at the entire panorama. We arrived with the usual birds flying low over the car bonnet like an advanced guard. My parents were there usual surprised warm hearted selves. My dad always loves to be able to extend hospitality, and I noticed for once how he had somehow centralised Clifford's work in the house. A painting of Wargulong, the 2 brothers with possum & kangaroo tracks overlooked the dining room table. A women's dancing ceremony at Mt. Wedge was in the living room together with a photo of Clifford, Gabriella & Emily at Unbungara which I gave to Clifford, and upstairs a beautiful deep green Possum story by Tim Leura from the late 70's. Later Clifford said your father's a big - and he demonstrated a Possum gesture - making me think he saw my dad as an important white person who's totem was the Possum if such a thing was possible.
This coincided with the fact that Possums ran on the roof and fed on the balcony each night - "you only see em in moonlight?" asked Clifford who seemed to be intrigued by this information. I didn't tell him how my mum had seen an apparition of an Aboriginal figure outside the door one week before Michael Nelson visited then a few years back but she told Clifford how she'd seen large blue tongue lizard that she thought was dead lying on a rock near the house a few days before Clifford arrived that was actually sunning itself and that had run off into the back when she walked up.
Clifford ate with exactly the same skill as us in spite of the European formality of the Sunday lunch. but he didn't talk that much - just enjoyed the meal before he headed back to Leichart where he painted the two kangaroo's on the two dancing men painting.
Linda Civic, a Luritcha woman from Kintore, step daughter who was also staying a the motel left in a taxi for Melbourne. Like Clifford she had been painting out the front of the motel with her pictures propped up to attract buyers who might happen to be driving along Catherine street. She'd been up the night before arguing with Clifford I think & both of them were there in the morning before her departure. She was crying when Vivien went down the night before, and during the night her & Clifford had sat up drinking & arguing with her husband - a white health worker from Kintore.
Linda had a painting in the Blake prize and I saw them coming back from the opening late that night. She was crossing Paramatta road I can still visualise the strange light floating motion of her walk. From Kintore to Leichart, from Leichart to Blaxland Gallery from 40,000 years of dreaming to a dotted crucifixion scene. Wonders never cease
The morning Linda left Clifford got lost. He walked away from Catherine St, I think looking for Brendon's place - who lived near there. It was early in the morning and he wondered round asking people if they knew where the hotel was - everyone he asked either couldn't understand him or else didn't know where it was. Clifford eventually found his way up to Paramatta road then back down Catherine street past the Mori Gallery but he described it as a frightening ordeal - lost in the streets "walkin walkin lookin lookin, askin, askin askin," walking till the sun came up.
The rest of the week went quickly - but Clifford worked slowly on the Dancing men picture when I talked to him about the picture he told me it's yours. He seemed to say the picture was for me - and this went beyond just being that I paid for it & owned it to include the idea that the story & it's meaning had some relevance to me - that there were other reasons for me having it. When Gabriella told me "the old man was thinking you might buy this picture too I asked Clifford how much it would be he answered after some thought $ 50,000.
A few days later Joy was talking about it being worth at least 6,000 then on the Wednesday when Vivien went down to tape Gabriella telling the story of the first two pictures I’d brought, Joy came up with Elaine the photographer and announced that Elaine was buying it for $4,000.
Get in here
Dream - Big deserted city with an old hotel where Bob Dylan was staying in a room . I was given a bed in the same room. But I couldn’t find the room again. It had a 3’x4’ thanka under the bed cover & a monk’s bag. Bob Dylan was a monk. We went looking for it later & found a big empty swimming pool.
Both of us felt terrible from that moment on. We suddenly realised we’d lost a picture that would have been perfect for the up coming exhibition of the collection of work we’d made. - One that perfectly illustrated the way we’d worked closely with the artists trying to understand why & what they were painting. There it was - sold for about half it’s real value. That evening we went down feeling really terrible- as if Clifford had worked for so long on a picture that he wanted us to have and then been at the mercy of the marketing of his work by others. We spent a little time in his room where I said you sold the painting to Joy. But Clifford shook his head vigorously - very vigorously, meaning I thought that I shouldn’t even talk about it. But what he really meant was that it was his painting and it wasn’t sold yet.
The next day Vivien left for Armandale to visit her father. I was going to fly up on the Friday - so I had one day left to see them. I went down on the Thursday morning after Vivien and the kids had left for Armidales. I knoked softly on the door there was a slight movement so I pushed it open. Clifford was in there sitting on the floor dotting. I sat down opposite the canvas.
Hello Kumanji - he said - this was what he called me. It means “he who has died” and is the word used for someone when there name is the same name as someone who has recently died. In my case it’s Clifford’s elder brother Tim Leura who died a few years back. Occasionally Clifford calls me Tim, occasionally Japaltjari, but usually Kumanji. He once said to me in Charles Creek. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you Kumanji but you know what happened to my big brother for years ago”.
I said “you sold the painting”
“No he said, it’s not sold”
I said but Joy said Elaine was buying it for $4,ooo. Clifford said “But you might want it too,” then told me how he was being “jyped”. I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. So he got a packet of razor blades off the shelf and placed it on the ground in front of me to demonstrate what he meant.
He said “it’s yours if you want it, you see this one business one, it’s all those stories - love story, bush fire story, all the same one.” Then he said “you don’t have to buy it, if you don’t want to, but I assured him that I wanted to, I really wanted to and we agreed on a price of $7,000. A lot of money perhaps but not considering the prices Clifford's work was just beginning to fetch in New York at auction and on resale. It really did seem like a “last fire truck from hell” to quote Bob Dylan from his latest album.
I wasn’t sure that Joy would agree to this so I asked Clifford what to do. He said to come back at 4.30 it’d be finished then. So I waited patiently at home till 4.30 then came back at exactly 4.30. The picture was sitting there just the same as when I left earlier and Clifford was no where to be found.
So I drove up Catherine street & along Paramatta road where I saw Joy standing with a roll of canvases trying to hail a taxi. So I stopped and ran up to tell her that Clifford had said I would buy the picture. She was actually pretty happy about it I think and as she hopped in the taxi she was tapping her head saying she’d think about it. I went over later and it wasn’t till my third visit at about 8.00 clock that I found Clifford there. He was sitting in Joys room and straight away he told her that he wanted to sell the picture to me. She agreed almost straight away after working out that Clifford could paint another smaller one for Elaine.
There was a tremendous feeling that I’d finally found the thing I was looking for. Clifford began telling the story as I wrote it on the back of the picture, waxing lyrical if briefly, and at the completion of the details said, “That’s it, that’s the story” gesticulating with open arms towards the painting. He signed it - writing upside down, and began laughing and making the thumbs up signal with a happy grin. Joy talked about a bottle of beer he’d hidden in the room. “It was hidden he exclaimed”.
Then Clifford was going to finish the picture that evening. I’ll be working till 1 o’clock he said, and I’d be able to pick up the picture up in the morning from the motel early because they were heading back to Alice Springs on a 10.40 flight. “Just come in the morning, just roll it up & take it with you. It’s yours.”
Then me & Clifford went up to Petersham shops, to buy some cigarettes. He brought his own counting out the exact money very slowly expecting at least a smile for this from the dusky blonde in the milk bar. Instead she just looked out at the passing traffic.
As we headed back to the motel Clifford said “palya” - which means good. It was the 1st time I’d heard him say this magic work. A sound that seemed to create good as well as it describing it. He said good by at the car - but I said Id be coming in to give Joy the cheque as I arranged. As we walked in he said to me “Sorry I thought I was at another camp” -meaning that for a moment he thought I was dropping him of at his own camp in Charles Creek -or something like that.
That night two buses crushed on the Pacific Highway near Kempsy killing 36 people. I woke up early that morning & watched the news on TV. Then went down to Leichart to pick up the picture. Clifford was lying curled up on the bed in a foetal position covering his face snoring loudly - I couldn’t wake him. The picture was lying there unfinished & red ochre paint was spilt on the carpet.
Eventually Gabriella turned up, then when an airplane went over, Clifford stirred. So I shook him and he woke up OK. When he was cogent I asked him what could we do about the unfinished picture. Will I let you take it back to Alice Springs to finish? I asked. “No”, he said. Will I keep it till you come back to Sydney? “No” he said again. “Or I could finish it I guess” I said.”Yes that’s it” he said “you know, you finish it”. Not an easy task I thought but perhaps an honour - I don’t know.
In the car he talked about a plan to use the 7,000 to drive to Melbourne, then up through Adelaide, & on to Alice Springs. But the next morning he was preparing to fly back to Alice Springs to be with the rest of his family for Christmas. He also talked about coming back to Sydney later to stay at my place for a couple of months & to paint a show.
The day after we’d drive back from Armidale after Christmas there was an earthquake with it’s epi-centre just west of Newcastle. The phone rang a few hours later & it was Gabriella Possum who was still in Sydney. She wanted to talk to Vivien who wouldn’t be back till later. I asked if she’d heard from Clifford - I might ring him this afternoon she said. Then that evening there was a call from Alice Springs and it was Richy saying Clifford wanted to talk to Gabriella.
So Vivien drove over to her place to get her. Then they rang back. Gabriella talked to Clifford about the earth quake. Apparently they were all very worried and all crying because they thought the earthquake had swallowed up Sydney and it had fallen through cracks in the. Clifford spoke to me to ask if we were all right. I wonder if Clifford had confused Newtown with Newcastle. We also arranged for Gabriella to finish her paintings. On the drive back from Armadale I read that the weather in Sydney - the Alice Springs conditions were actually blown across from the desert. I couldn’t understand why Clifford could do this - since he knew we were in Armandale but later I heard that Gabriella was still here. This explains it.
Other news was that Clifford had just finished a new 2 metre square painting of Honey ants but when I asked Clifford about it he said it was Lizard Dreaming.