Jack Date Kimberley Artist: it synoptic biography prepared by Kevin Shaw consulting anthropologist
\n' localBio += 'Jack Dale was burn in the bush on Mount House Station. His mother, Moddera, was an Indigenous woman traditional to the Komaduwah clan estate that falls within (lie Mount House Pastoral Lease, The land enclosed by Komaduwah as with the nearby estates of Winyaduwah and Warrakali, is characterized by steeply rising ranges interspersed with small plains, fast flowing wet, season rivers that slice through deep gorges and mysterious billabongs shaded by pandanus palms and paper bark trees standing in a silent vigil by the water&rsquo&s edge. Through the eyes of indigenous gather-hunters, tutored in knowledge evolved over thousands of years, these estates are ruggedly beautiful places of great abundance. Paradoxically for people less well tutored and adapted, the seductive appeal of these estates can easily give way to unforgiving circumstances that have more in common with death than with sustenance and nurture.
\n' localBio += 'Jack’s father was Jack Dale the frontiersman. According to oral accounts Jack Dale senior was a hard living, man concerned for little more than the moment, Reputedly he died as violently as he had lived, and his remains were placed in the hot Kimberley earth with little ceremony or sorrow. Jack was a small boy when his father died, and his knowledge of him derives largely from stories told by his mother and pastoral workers in later years.
\n' localBio += 'There are no records of Jack Dale’s birth. A conservative estimate of his age based on information gleaned from the headstones of several lonely graves, places him at no less than seventy-eight years He was born at a time when it was not uncommon for the infants of traditional women fathered by white men to be killed at birth. Such deaths could occur following instructions issued by a pastoralist, his representative, or senior indigenous men and women concerned about future threats to traditional authority and social order. Whatever the deliberations that took place in the first few days of his life, Jack Dale is uncertain as to how or why his life was spared, Following the death or his father he grew up in the bush with his mother’s father as a gatherer-hunter During this time he learned a lot about Traditional Law. (Narrungunni) and became well acquainted with station beef slain with a shovel nosed spear.
\n' localBio += 'As the child of the union of a black woman and a white man Jack Dale lived with the constant threat of Wing abducted by the police and the prospect of forced removal to institutions that neither he nor his extended family could have ever conceived of This threat ensured that Jack Dale was kept in the bush out of view of patrolling police officers and their, at times, fiendish native trackers. Children of Jack’s background were often sort after by pastoralists who saw in them the potential for specialist labour well adapted for the rigours of open range stock work. The political ascendancy of the pastoralists at the time also gave this youthful labour some protection from the police.
\n' localBio += 'The pastoral industry provided young Indigenous men with tempting incentives. In particular, many sought the prestige conferred upon people who displayed great courage and elegance in the management of spirited horse and for throwing massive wild bulls to the ground by the tail and strapping their legs together. Jack Dale is revered among old stockmen as a man who was never thrown from a horse and never beaten by a beast. Whether black or white they warmly describe him as skilled, tough, uncompromising stockman and bushman. The pastoral industry has seen many changes that Jack both resents arid laments.
\n' localBio += 'Retirement has always sat heavily on Jack Mile, In recent rime his has sought to rediscover arid revive his experiences of bush life through art, It is a very unique experience of a quick witted and honest man, often mischievous though subtly Crafted humour that reflects his mastery of Ngarinyin, the language of his birth, arid Several other Indigenous Kimberley languages.
\n' localBio += 'Jack Dale is Kimberley history personified. He is as real and as fair dinkum as it gets, Jack’s works represent a unique first hand pictorial account of a largely unknown n and unrepeatable chapter of Australian history.
\n' bioBase['jackdale'] = localBio; localBio = "";