When I was younger me and my family went fishing just outside of Broome. We went for a long walk before settling down on a reef. After a while of fishing, I started to notice light reflecting weirdly in the water, curiously I stuck my fishing rod in the water and poked at it. It appeared to be some sort of jellyfish without tentacles, looking around I saw more and more coming in with the tide. Distracted with my fascination of the jellyfish I hadn’t noticed what was going on around me. My mum further up the beach was singing out to us to look into the ocean, to my surprise I saw a large group of sea turtles swimming only 30 meters away. From then on we seen all different turtles big and small, my favorite by far was the albino one that seemed to stay around more than the others. I don’t know how many fish we caught that day but I’ll always remember the jellyfish and the turtle. I always say that these turtles had come to visit my sister for her birthday but really, they were just hungry turtles coming in to feast. In my family turtles represent girls this painting in particular they represent me and my two older sisters.
The three circles in my painting represent my homeland, Nudagun being made up of three freshwater springs. The spring that is on the boarder of the marsh we call the butterfly spring. When we visit this spring we walk into this paperbark forest where the closer you get to the spring the more butterflies you will see.