Painting for Their Lives

An auction was organized for the close of the show, with 35 Aboriginal works donated by collectors, artists and dealers. Central were four large new collaborative paintings by the men and women of Kintore and Kiwirrkura, a Pintupi settlement 200 km to the west, across the West Australian border. These came together as quickly and spontaneously as the Papunya movement had 20 years earlier. "We just threw the paints out," recalls Sweeney, "and they went for it." So, too, did bidders on the auction night, including businessman Kerry Stokes, who paid $A300,000 for the Kiwirrkura men's painting. All up, $A1.1 million was raised.

Then came four years of hard slog. In charge of steering the project, Paul Rivalland had to convince government and health officials that dialysis at Kintore was possible. The then Federal Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge, was skeptical. "It's something that no one in the world has been able to make work in the desert," he said. Undeterred, Rivalland had his "kidney committee" visit the Royal Perth Hospital's remote dialysis center in Broome, which helps around 50 Aboriginal patients in the bush. "You can do it anywhere," he insists. "Osama bin Laden is on renal dialysis. If he could do it in the caves, we can do it in Kintore."

The plan they arrived at was for patients to spend three weeks of treatment at an Alice Springs training house, followed by three weeks back at Kintore with the same nurse. It so impressed health minister Toyne that his government provided two machines and nurses, plus pilot funding for 12 months, with plans to use the model elsewhere in the state. One of the first patients through was Turkey Tolson's widow, Mary, who was well enough to join in women's business at Kintore this month, dancing at ceremony and collecting bush tomatoes. Next, Toyne wants to target the younger generation of Pintupi people with preventive measures, looking at better immunization, hygiene and diet. In the meantime, says Tim Kingender, "at least the dialysis center will give a window of time in which these problems can be addressed."

Back at Kintore's shed, Josephine Napurrula applies the last of her white impasto daubs to the canvas. These are packed like cotton-wool clouds around the picture's central image of an ice-gray waterhole. "Finished," she says, before breaking into raucous laughter. Now, in the desert, a new journey begins.