May Moodoonuthi, was born around 1929 at Thundiyi on the north side of the island. Bijarrb, her totemic name, means ‘dugong’. Thundiyingathi was her birthplace. Little is known about her parents or siblings.

May was not yet married when the Kaiadilt people were brought to Mornington Island. Some years later, she was married to Darwin Moodoonuthi in a church wedding, and has a photograph of herself in a formal long white gown. Sadly, they lost their only child at birth, but because under Kaiadilt tradition women have many classificatory children (the children of anyone who counts as a sister), she has played an important part in bringing up many other children in the community. Her husband, Darwin, was born in 1939, and was a leader of the Kaiadilt people until his untimely death in 1983.

May is an amazing fisherwoman and hunter, described by her grandchildren as a “number one tracker”. She will spot a subtle change in the sand and immediately know how long ago the track was made, who made it and where they are headed. Many a goanna is pulled out of hiding crag a short while after May has spotted the elusive trail. A fire is built, the goanna is tossed on top and May is back out on the beach throwing a hand line into the sea, digging turtle eggs out of the sand (always leaving some behind), placing them gently into a child’s rusty beach bucket, and then filling an empty milk-powder tin with oysters and Keens curry powder – you will never go hungry with May beside you.

But it is her tracking abilities that are exceptional. We remember one time walking along the beach on Allen Island, when May spotted a trail of footprints along the beach. “Smithy” she said as clearly as if she was looking at a photograph of his face. We walked along the beach beside the footprints, when a second set of foot-prints appeared out of the bush-line, and joined the first. May’s eyebrow shot up, and in a half whisper she said “Rebecca.” The footprints continued together for awhile, side by side, and then disappeared into the bush. On the other side of the sand hill, hidden among the trees, we saw the footprints lead to a large pile of disrupted, and flattened sand. May just shook her head with a wry smile, as if watching a slightly embarrassing love scene unfold in a movie. The footprints separated on the other side of the sandhill, and May said, “Look, he has gone back to his wife, and she has gone back to her fishing.”

May has always been extremely artistic, conscious of how she looks and always wears beautiful bright clothes and decorates her home with beach-combed collages. She also makes delicate shell and seed necklaces, and beautiful hand rolled and hand dyed pandanus string, which she knots and crochets into small and stunningly beautiful dilly bags. Wherever May lives she plants gardens and hangs adornments around. While a formal knowledge of art was clearly absent through a lack of exposure or opportunity, May always intuitively knew what a picture represented, or what kind of mood was being presented in a picture. We remember how, on one our first trips to Mornington Island 24 years ago, May saw a Western Desert poster hanging on the wall of our donga, a mass of concentric ochres dots. She looked at it for a short while and said, “beautiful water-place, bubba.” The painting was called “Waterholes” and yet this was written in English, on the back of the poster.