Region: Yugul Mangl (Ngukurr) –Northern Territory, Australia

Language group: Alawa,

Willie Gudabi c 1917-1996 an Alawa painter was born at Nutwood Downs station in the Northern Territory and grew up in the Alawa country.

He developed his skills hunting and gathering on the margins of small cattle stations such as St Vidgeon, Bauhinia downs, Nutwood Downs and Tanumbirini.

Before he went to live at Ngukurr, Gudabi worked as a stockman at a number of these stations including Tanumbirini, where he went through ceremony and was initiated and induction into the mysteries of complex sacred life of his people.After a stint at printmaking, Gudabi took up acrylic painting with other Ngukurr artists in 1987.

Often working collaboratively with his wife Moima Willie (c.1935-) of the Ngalakan people.

Gudabi soon developed a densely-painted narratives, sometimes gridded into a patchwork of vignettes relating to one or more of the interconnected stories about the characters, ceremonies sites, plants and animals of his country.

This became his story board.

A recurring character in Gudabi works is Gurdang one of the last survivors of the early contact period.

He was a mysterious person who shunned any contact with the white settlers, preferring to live alone out bush.

He left a legacy of rock art in Alawa country, with which Willie Gudabi was familiar, and was also associated with a secret ceremony central to Gudabi’s paintings.

For a long time Gudabi had wished to recover a cache of sacred items that Gurdang had secreted before his death in the labyrinthine stone country called Langgabayan.

"He told me that his paintings of Gurdang were meant to be about handing down the law."

Aware of his own impending death, Gudabi enlisted the assistance of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority to relocate these items to a safe place.