My Days With Dickie

Our favorite person out here is Dickie. He is the cutest tjilpi (old man) out here. He used to come in a get all his shopping by himself, but now we do his shopping for him when he comes in. I think in his day he was a womanizer, b/c he has kungka's (women) everywhere. He was going to marry Rosie after Christmas when she was here. Bet she is glad she left, although we joked, 'at least he has lots of money!'

We had many battles with his wife, over dresses and shoes. She had a big spear that she would pretend to threaten us with, then she would shriek with laughter when we looked scared. Dickie would always try to find shoes for her and in the end he would just say 'kungka has big feet!' When his wife died all he said was' just me, only 1 left and point to himself, then say other one up here and point to the sky.

Now it is just him and his 10 dogs. He lives in a little self-made shelter/tent. And drives around in his john deer car. Dickie is one of the more well known painters at the Ernabella art centre. His paintings sell for thousands of dollars. And believe it or not...he is in his 90's!

His car was broken down for a few weeks and we would sometimes deliver his groceries to him if he didn't walk down to the store. The last weekend before his car was fixed, I dropped off groceries for him b/c it was raining and he didn't show up at the store. Well wasn't I in for a surprise when I seen Dickie in his house. He was sitting there on the blankets with no pants on. THANK GOODNESS he had a long shirt on!

And it happened again when we were driving by him in his other shed. I glanced over to see if he was there, and went 'oh, Dickie is in the doorway with no shirt on...and no pants....yikes! Thankfully we were a bit away from him and him being dark skin and dark in the shed...ya you get the picture.

But you gotta love him! He calls Allison the long kungka! and I'm just the kungka! But he does call me his daughter, now and again.

What can we say, we take care of him.