Police Rock Hole - Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford

Bedford was born circa 1922 on Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley. A few years beforehand, Paddy Quilty, the owner of the station (and the man who gave Paddy Bedford his 'Christian' name), was responsible for the murder by strychnine poisoning of a group of Gija men who had killed a milking cow. This massacre has weighed heavily on Bedford throughout his life. He and fellow Jirrawun founder, Timmy Timms (now deceased), were able to recall a corroboree (or joonba) which told the story of the killings. The corroboree, which had never before been seen by a white audience, became the basis of a performance piece, Fire fire burning bright, presented by the Neminuwarlin Performance Group from the East Kimberley at the Perth and Melbourne festivals in 2002.

The massacre also became the subject of a series of paintings by the Jirrawun group that were shown in the exhibitions 'Blood on the Spinifex', at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, and 'True Stories: The Art of the East Kimberley', at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney, both 2003. With the support of Jirrawun patron and former Governor-General of Australia Sir William Deane, the artists aimed through these paintings to have their stories accepted by white Australia. The exhibitions were a powerful reply to revisionist historians such as Keith Windschuttle, author of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002) whose work had thrown into question the veracity of such massacres as the one at Bedford Downs Station.' (J. Eccles, Jirrawun: a unique model, in Art & Australia, vol. 44, I, Spring 2006)