For much of his adult life, Rover Thomas worked on cattle stations located on the edges of the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts, lands that would deeply shape his artistic imagination.

He lived for a time at Bow River Station, where he married for the first time, and later worked at Texas Downs, Old Lissadell, and Mabel Downs, near the community of Warmun (formerly Turkey Creek), where he eventually settled in the 1970s.

It was toward the end of that decade that Rover Thomas turned to painting, encouraged by his uncle, Paddy Jaminji, who came from Bedford Downs Station.

The work shown here, painted on plywood, is one of his earliest known compositions. It depicts Bedford Downs, a site of profound historical significance for Aboriginal communities: in 1924, shortly before the artist’s birth, this location was the scene of a massacre of Indigenous people carried out by settlers.

This event forms part of a tragic chapter in the history of the East Kimberley region, remembered by local communities as the "massacre years," which spanned from the late 19th century to the 1920s. By incorporating this narrative into his work, Rover Thomas does more than preserve a collective memory, he makes a political and spiritual statement, affirming the resilience of Aboriginal culture and the essential act of remembrance.