In the Desert: Jimmy Pike as a Boy

Jimmy Pike is one of Australia’s most famous Aboriginal artists, represented in collections in all major Australian public galleries and museums. He grew up in the Great Sandy Desert during the 1940s and 1950s. This is his story as told by his lifetime partner, English-born Pat Lowe, who spent three years in the desert with him, and many more years listening to his stories. This remarkable and intimate account of what was a traditional Walmajarri boyhood, one of the last of its kind, opens your eyes to a completely different culture and way of experiencing the world. The startling fact is that after 60,000 years following a nomadic, hunter-gatherer way of life, the exodus of the Walmajarri people from the desert occurred in only one or two generations after white settlement. When Jimmy Pike and his family saw aeroplanes, they imagined that the machines took off on feet like eagles: they simply had no concept of a wheel! And when they saw the light on in the plane, they thought there was a very hard working woman up there: ‘she is always cooking on that fire’.
From earliest memories, to leaving the desert at about age fifteen, Pat Lowe recounts the sometimes joyous and funny, sometimes painful and poignant events of Jimmy Pike’s life.

Though written with a young audience in mind (13+), this story has universal relevance, and will appeal as much to adults as to younger readers.