Paddy covered a lot of ground in his interviews with us out at Yanjilpiri, trying to paint as complete a picture as possible. At the end of his last interview here he said, "Only one fella still living — me!"

Paddy is the last person to hold the vast body of traditional knowledge about his country in its entirety. He is the last to have learned it in an in-depth way from firsthand experience, while living a traditional lifestyle out here until he was about 20 years of age. After hearing him say, "Only one fella still living — me!" with more than a little sadness in his voice, the wellspring of his tenacity and determination became clear. Memories of his own loss — the loss of his kin and his traditional way of life — and a clear understanding of the implications of the what the loss of his repertoire of traditional knowledge, and that of others like him, would mean to his culture as a whole has been a powerful motivation in his later years. He keeps telling his stories by whatever means possible, orally, through songs and paintings and now through the new medium of film to ensure that his repertoire of traditional knowledge is not lost. And, given his advanced age this is clearly a matter of urgency.