Jukuja Dolly Snell

Born about 1933
Wangkajunga language group, Nampijin skin group
Fitzroy Crossing
Mangkaja Arts

My mother told me, ‘Daughter there’s a whitefella on a horse coming!’ I ran and hid in a creek bed. My mother was still sitting there. After he left she went and got me from my hiding place, telling me, ‘He’s gone now, that man. Let’s keep walking’. [At] Pankupiti, I told my mother, ‘Can you kill that animal with woolly hair?’ It was a sheep. ‘I won’t kill it,’ she said, ‘It belongs to the white man.’ ‘But I’m hungry!’ I said. She said, ‘No. I am taking you away.’

Dolly was born at Kurtal. When her father passed away she travelled with her mother to Balgo, then Louisa Downs and Kupartiya (Bohemia Downs) stations where she worked and eventually married her childhood sweetheart, Spider Snell.