"I was put in a dormitory as a child, that's where I went to school. No good those dormitory days that old McCarthy used to flog us boys, flog us around. I was twelve when I went to Palm Island to be a carpenter for one year. I came back, worked and went to a cattle station in Queensland. I was driving cattle, training horse and ringing, cooking and mustering.

I first saw Arnold Watt and the Roughsey brothers painting, I was about fifteen then. We used to go hunting a lot, fishing, spear dugong, spear turtle. I went to the Opera House in 1973, dancing. I've been all around Australia dancing. I never went overseas I stayed in Australia. I still dance with the dancers, I dance here on the island for culture. All the places I've been dancing.

I have one son and lots of grandchildren, the Roughsey girls, a lot of little grand children Watt's as well. I like painting, painting all the time. I like working with the old men, my brothers and my grand daughter Jolene's paints with me in the art centre. I like bright red and white and black, they are my favourite, yellow too. Rock Cod and Dingo, big stories for me, in that dog story they used that red ochre, we can catch women with that ochre. Emu is up in my mothers country, that's where that dingo finished."

Joseph Watt