Albert Namatjjra's house is humble,dilapidated,fenced off and neglected.Credit:Alamy
It's little less than a national disgrace. Many of Australia's most famous white painters - from Hans and Nora Heysen to Arthur Boyd,Brett Whiteley and Sidney Nolan have had their houses and/or studios canonised. But not Albert Namatjira:the first Indigenous Australian to be given full citizenship rights in the birth country of himself and his many ancestors.
Driving along the road from Glen Helen to Alice Springs,we almost miss the sign pointing to the house he had built when he was world-famous,around five kilometres from where he was raised in Hermannsburg. His house is humble,dilapidated,fenced off and neglected. Three rogue dogs stop us even getting out of the car,so ferocious are they to protect"their patch".
Namatjira deserves a better memorial (and certainly not the hokey statue on the other side of town).
A Hermannsburg Potters artist holding her finished artwork.Credit:Felix Baker
Some locals have been pressing for Namatjira's home to be heritage-listed for years. Instead he has a highway named after him. Such is modern life.
Fortunately Namatjira's continuing contribution to Australian art is well preserved at the Hermannsburg Historical District - the Lutheran mission where the young Albert was raised and learnt to paint.
Before Alice Springs was chosen as the half-way point between Adelaide and Darwin for the telegraph line linking Australia to the rest of the world,Hermannsburg was the biggest settlement between the two capitals.
The German missionaries who founded Hermannsburg arrived by bullock cart from Adelaide,exhausted after a 20 month journey in 1877.
The land was already occupied when the Lutherans arrived. The Arrernte language group roamed over an estimated 120,000 square kilometres of central Australia when the First Fleet rounded Sydney Heads.