Susan and her dog Splat collecting mail from the mail plane at Doongan Station

Rock Art Australia (RAA) founder, Susan Bradley OAM retires from the Board 30 years after establishing the Bush University with Ngarinyin Elders which morphed over time into Rock Art Australia. Susan leaves an immense legacy of supporting and promoting two-way research into Australia’s cultural legacy.

Kimberley rock art is an extraordinary cultural and archaeological legacy and deeply significant to the Aboriginal people of the Kimberley. Susan fully appreciated both aspects of the art: two ways to see. She set up the organisation, the Bush University, with Ngarinyin Elders which became twenty-five years later Rock Art Australia. Her adult life has been lived in the Kimberley. She has spent most of it as a pastoralist and along the way developed strong relationships with a great many, if not most Kimberley people. She learnt from her close friends amongst the Miriuwung and Gajerrong people about culture and kinship, she learnt from Hannah Rachel Bell the white fella’s responsibility in relation to Aboriginal culture and she learnt from Grahame Walsh the extraordinary extent of the Kimberley rock art legacy. She brought all this together and became an articulate advocate for research, for protection and for promotion of Kimberley rock art, one of Rock Art Australia’s bylines.

She brought also to this mission, and hence to Rock Art Australia, unique personal qualities. Her masterly organisational skills employed to the full in delivering equipment, stores and people to remote parts of the Kimberley point to a lost career as a logistics engineer. A personal network of surprising breadth across Australia, a result of her vibrant interest in people and her natural ability to relate to everyone regardless of their sphere in society, she wove into a powerful network of support for Rock Art Australia. She was described once by the brilliant journalist and author Nicolas Rothwell as having the best address book in Australia, and it is true. Not a capital city in Australia but Susan has a group of close but also influential friends. The famous and the titled especially feature.

She is a force for life, positive, a born raconteur, funny, a Justice of the Peace, a marriage celebrant, former President of East Kimberley/Wyndham Shire, friend in need to countless Aboriginal friends, a recipient of recognition in the Order of Australia and a go to person for all things Kimberley. She is also highly principled and courageous, and all these attributes have been employed to promote and support the work of Rock Art Australia.

Her first encounter with the rock art galleries of the Kimberley was on the pastoral lease Carlton Hill owned by her and her husband David.   According to Susan:

“The Old People – the Miriuwung and Gajerrong people – that I learned so much from, had a very big impact on my life; a huge responsibility to look after the country and to care for the country and I think that’s what inspires me”.

Some years later in the dry season of 1995, Susan and Hannah Rachel Bell organised the first Bush University with a trip to Marunbabidi in the far north Kimberley. They gathered like-minded people from diverse backgrounds mostly from Sydney to camp with four Ngarinyin men and four women.

For the next three years, Susan facilitated several Bush University camps. After the second Bush University in 1996 Friends of the Ngarinyin was formed. The group comprised Bush University graduates and Elders committed to the protection and preservation of traditional Aboriginal culture. Among the graduates who became part of the Friends of the Ngarinyin group was Susan’s friend, and Rock Art Australia Emeritus Director, Christina Kennedy. Christina’s reflection of Susan’s contribution over the decades is:

“It is impossible to squeeze the essence of Susan’s involvement with rock art into a nutshell. Her early exposure to it led to a fascination that drove her to extraordinary lengths to find out about it and learn how to protect these treasures of the past. Her early collaboration with Traditional Owners like David Mowljarlai, Paddy Neowarra, and many others led to the formation of a group of like-minded people who determined that this painted cultural history should be explored for its potential secrets, like the authorship, dating, and methods for conservation and preservation. It is fair to say that without Susan there would have been no Foundation. Rock Art Australia would not exist. She was the catalyst, the instigator, and the inspiration for years of work that has been done to build what is now RAA. I know all this because I was beside her from the beginning. Her bubbling enthusiasm and love of gathering people around certainly helped to captivate many supporters along the way. She always saw the mission of the Foundation very clearly and fiercely resisted forays into areas unrelated to the research. Susan should feel very content that she has made an extraordinary contribution to the contemporary knowledge of an ancient tradition in this country. I hope that she can be happy in her retirement from the Foundation to see her efforts consolidated further and safely established on the path for which it was originally intended”.

In 1997 a decision was made to formalise the Friends of the Ngarinyin group into a tax-deductible entity to be known as The Wandjina Foundation Australia. The aims and objectives of the Foundation were to research, protect, and preserve the rock art of the Wandjina people.

The momentum grew and by 2002 the Foundation’s research interests had grown beyond Wandjina traditional areas. The Foundation was renamed the Kimberley Foundation Australia (KFA) and became registered as a non-for-profit organisation. Awareness of the cultural significance of the staggering repository of rock art of the Kimberley was slowly spreading, spear headed by the maverick obsessive genius of Grahame Walsh. In 2001 Dunkeld Pastoral Company Pty Ltd (DPC) purchased two pastoral leases in the remote north Kimberley, Theda Station and Doongan Station. Susan became the manager for DPC.

In 2007 the KFA established a Science Advisory Council (SAC), with the incomparable Dr. Jim Ross appointed as the inaugural Chairman. Many new research projects were initiated. The SAC has guided the KFA board in the growing number of research projects it has supported.  Support for the field trips associated with KFA research projects became centred at the two stations.  Susan’s hugely competent input was essential to the operation and success of the camps and ultimately the research.

The organisation Susan founded in 1997 morphed once more in 2020 this time to become known as Rock Art Australia. Its remit remains unchanged; to tell by way of research the untold story of Australia through its rock art and to protect and promote the art.

Rather than acknowledging Susan’s retirement as a loss to Rock Art Australia, we celebrate her immense contribution as a win because of the great success of her commitment and efforts and for the legacy she has left behind. Emeritus Director Jim Ross sums up the sentiment of RAA’s past and present Board members by saying:

“This must be fake news, because the Susan I worked with never had a retirement bone in her body. Who else can ensure the Board does not forget the “Bush University” beginnings, and the early Kimberley Foundation days of blending the development of the SAC with an enthusiastic Board? And who else has been the constant in the growth of an idea to the full flowering of RAA over the last 25+ years?

Thank you, Susan, for your gracious hospitality in the Kimberley and in Broome, for your devotion to the Kimberley and its Indigenous past, and for your practical contributions that ensured we kept our feet on the ground. 

May retirement be replete with blessings”.

Susan Bradley (left) with RAA Emeritus Directors Sam Lovell & Christina Kennedy