"I remember getting a message that Aunty Sally Gabori was coming over to Bentinck to show us something.  She brought one of her paintings and gave it to Ethel.  It was beautiful.  So, we decided that we would follow Sally and paint too. I got a shock when I went to the Art Centre and saw all my sisters and Aunties painting.  Now I paint with them.

I was born behind Nyinyilki on Bentinck Island.

I remember when I was small, and planes used to fly overhead we used to run and hide in the mangroves.  It was fun playing and growing up on Bentinck as small girls but that soon changed when they came and took us away and dumped us on Mornington Island on 1946. Life was very hard in the dormitory.  We were fed flour with weevils in it, we had to bathe in saltwater and our clothes were made out of rough material like the canvas we now paint on. I went out to the mainland to work for a few years on stations before coming back to Mornington and having children.

When our land rights came it was great to be free of Mornington Island and be able to return to our home.  I took my grandchildren with me to show them their traditional Country and to live on our homeland once again."

"My country is behind Nyinyilki, this is where I was born on a saltpan under the ti-trees.  You can see Sweers Island from here.  My Father, King Alfred, was dragging grass across the sea with his other wives, to catch fish.  He didn't know I was coming. It was my Aunty who ran to let my father know.  My Grandmother delivered me, she was the one that cut my cord with a special shell.  They thought I would be a boy because I was so big in my mother’s tummy.  My Father put me in a coolamon and carried me all the way to Oak Tree Point, a better place to camp.  It was a long way to walk all that way carrying me."

“Rukathi is on Bentinck Island, we also call it call it Oak Tree Point.  This is the place where our Father, King Alfred, is buried. Our last name is supposed to be Rukathi, but the missionaries mispronounced it and today we are known as Loogatha.”

ABC article:

My name is Bereline and Amy Loogatha is my Mother and I would like to share three stories she’s spoken of over the years during my conversations with her.

As you may be aware she lived at a time when there was tribal fighting and early contact with Europeans. This story is about her and her father’s reaction to any strangers arriving in boats. My Grandfather was made larger than life to me and my siblings. She loved and admired him and so he too is a part of her art work and also the Country she grew up in.

She said,” My father King Alfred taught us my sisters and myself to run and hide in the sand dunes and thick scrubs eveytime strangers specially ones in boats would come to Oaktree Point. I remember he would pick up my baby brother Peter and throw him on his shoulders with spears and fighting sticks in his hand and up the big sand dunes he would go running (she would laugh at this point of the story). Yeah, we would sit and wait quietly until they went away. If us children made any noise, he would wack us with his club so we soon learned early to stay quiet.”

My mother always sits and watches the sunsets. I would be busy and she’d say to me “Come come look at the sun - look at the sky it’s so pretty,” so off I’d go to see her sunset she stands there as if memorising every color red and oranges her favorite colours. Then she’d say “I’m going to paint that”. If the sky had pink shades she’d say “It’s going to be a cold night.”

It’s the same with the claypan. She would talk about all the country she walked on that was red, orange, and white, and sometimes blue when the tides came in. You see her beloved home Bentinck Island is littered with clay pans - they divide the Island.

My Mother remembers the time she and her family were removed from Country. She laughs a lot when telling this story perhaps to hide her pain. She said “We was all on that boat getting ready to sail to Mornington Island. We (her and her sister) heard Mum Phoebe (his mother) crying and then we realise that our little brother Peter was standing on the shore waving us goodbye - my sister and I we starting crying and yelling with our mothers for the people to stop and go back which they did and the whole family was happy we were together again”.

For all the trauma my Mother and her people endured her memories of Family Country kept her balanced.