08/01/2019

The Liminality of Dusk

The Carrolup child artists appear to have been particularly fascinated with the liminality of dusk. That is, the period between day and night when the light gradually fades to become night; when the breeze settles and becomes stillness personified, and when colours become simply black and white. When […]
07/01/2019

Happy New Year… And Some Reflections

It’s good to be back after a long break for the Christmas and New Year holidays. I would first like to wish you all the very best for 2019. I know that John would say the same if he was here. At present, he’s in New Zealand spending […]
14/12/2018

Thank You, A Break, Best Wishes and…

The website has been running for just over a month now and we’ve uploaded blog postings on all but three days. Our major aims in this initial period have been to: enhance awareness of the Story of Carrolup to the public and make people aware of our initiative, […]
13/12/2018

Our Visit to Carrolup

John and I visited Carrolup—or Marribank as it later became—on the 26th November 2018, on our way down to Albany from Perth. We walked around and explored some of the buildings, reflecting on what had gone on before when Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and held […]
12/12/2018

Guests See ‘Koorah Coolingah’, Katanning Art Gallery, 2006

Following the Official Opening at the ‘Koorah Coolingah: Children Long Ago’ exhibition at Katanning on 24th February 2006, members of the community, and the wider public, were allowed into the Katanning Art Gallery for the first time. Many had wanted to come in earlier in the week when we […]
10/12/2018

Ezzard Flowers Speaking at the Official Opening of ‘Koorah Coolingah’

Ezzard Flowers, who travelled to Colgate University in America with Athol Farmer and John Stanton, reminds us of the impact of the return to the South-West of some of the ‘lost’ collection of Carrolup children’s art on Noongar culture. It was, indeed, an emotional occasion. Indeed, the event was […]
09/12/2018

Homecoming of Carrolup Artworks, 2006

Colgate University in up-state New York seemed a very long way, and a very long time ago, as Howard and I watched the Opening Ceremony at Katanning, a welcome homecoming to the 20 artworks that had been loaned by the Picker Gallery to the Perth International Arts Festival […]
07/12/2018

Institutionalisation of the Carrolup children

In recent blog posting, David revealed the memories of Carrolup artist Revel Cooper about life on Carrolup in the first half of 1940s, when the children were ‘running wild’. In his most recent posting, he described Revel’s memories of the time when Mrs Elliot was teacher between 1945 […]
05/12/2018

The Arrival of Mrs Elliot at Carrolup

In my last blog, I wrote how Michael Liu and I found a ‘letter’ written by Carrolup artist Revel Cooper in 1960, which described how the children were ‘running wild’ at Carrolup Native Settlement during the first half of the 1940s. Revel went on to say: After the […]
03/12/2018

Running Wild – Revel Cooper’s Memories of Carrolup

When close friend and filmmaker Michael Liu and I were researching the life of Carrolup artist Revel Cooper, we came across an important ‘letter’ he wrote that was in the Doreen Trainor Collection at Battye Library. Revel wrote his memories of Carrolup Native Settlement from the time he […]
02/12/2018

The ‘Lost’ Florence Rutter Carrolup Collection

We’ve been thrilled with the response we’ve had from community members about The Carrolup Story website, and their delight in looking again at a selection of the Carrolup children’s art we have shown. However, we’ve just realised that we haven’t let everybody know that a number of works […]
30/11/2018

Farewell Albany & Project Importance

Good morning. Today, John and I head back to Perth this morning after a very enjoyable week staying with Tony Davis in Albany. We’ll drop into The Kodja Place in Kojunup to meet John Benn, who as a youngster was taken to Carrolup by his mother, a local teacher. […]
29/11/2018

Adventures in the South West

On Monday, John and I travelled down to Albany to stay with my good friend Tony Davis. We stopped at The Woolshed in Williams,  where John ate a tasty savoury muffin and I gorged on a lamb and rosemary pie.  John reflected on how he had stopped at […]
28/11/2018

Keeping Up With the Jones’s

Before I moved to Australia at the end of 2008, I lived in a beautiful area of South Wales (UK) for 16 years. In Wales, the most common surname is Jones. I didn’t know any Jones’s! Since starting to investigate the Carrolup Story, Jones’s have started ‘appearing’ in […]
27/11/2018

Athol Farmer: Maintaining Noongar Heritage

Athol Farmer comes from Gnowangerup, where there was a Mission up until the 1980s. It is now an Education Centre. Athol travelled to Colgate University with Ezzard Flowers and myself back in ’05, to inspect the newly rediscovered collection of Noongar child art from the late 1940s and […]