Despite his at times shaky command of English, Paddy Sims can be quite a charming conversationalist. We had a great interview early in the morning in front of his house, one day when he was fresh. He recounted his first meeting in the 1930's with "whitefellas," the missionary from Haast's Bluff, Pastor Reece, and his party. He also told me a great deal about his life between the time when he was "brought in" and when he and his contemporaries started painting at Yuendumu in the early 1980's. A time that I was always curious about, knowing that he'd lived a traditional life out bush as a young man and that he'd become a famous painter as an old man, but his life in between always felt like a big blank space when in the years that I had known him on a more casual basis before starting work on the film.

After being "found" and "brought in" by the missionaries he began a life of hard manual labor which involved digging wells and building fences and tending a model garden. Ironically, Aboriginal people provided much of the labor which would help to settle the Northern Territory of Australia during the 20th century and foreclose on their traditional way of life. Paddy is remarkably not bitter. In our conversations he seemed proud of his ability to do hard work and to rise up to all the considerable challenges with which his changing circumstances presented him. Paddy is a man of great dignity who clearly took pride in whatever he was doing. Yet he always kept that intrinsically Aboriginal love of his country in his heart and the hope that he could maintain his connection to it, by whatever means available to him, even if at times only through singing it's songs, and holding its Dreamings close to his heart. Paddy's perseverance in the face of adversity and his dignity and humanity are qualities which came through time and again in my interviews and in my travels with him.