"When I was young, I used to go around playing with my little mates for a while, then I would I have to get home, no taps ran in those days, we used to carry buckets and drums of water back to the house. When I was a young man we used to do ringing, my father was a head stockman on Mornington Island. I used to go and help him out then I got the idea. I was old enough, so I left school to go and work with him. My first cattle station was Augusta Downs, the second station was Amarandle cattle station, third station was Thorton Downs, for twenty years I worked on stations.

I used to dance in the community but I never went out travelling around. I've painted all the way through my life, since I was at school right till today. I think back to how I started, I'd been sketching with a pencil, then I moved to a brush later in life. I've done a lot of artwork, I think about what I have done in my time. My artis in private homes, I might meet up with those people one day, go to their house to see my work still hanging.

For a long time I was frightened to paint our body art, the sacred, but we are the old men, we have to make decisions and it is alright for us, to make a new economy. This is really our own painting, no one has this way. We got our law and it stays with us, that's our identity, we keep that, cause it was handed down by the old people, the traditional elders. They handed that law to us, we have to hand this law down to our younger ones now, so it can still be carried out, so they know their identity, who they are and where they come from."

Melville Escott