Much loved Lismore local and Bundjalung man Albert Digby Moran passed away last week. The internationally celebrated Aboriginal artist grew up in the community on Cabbage Tree Island, south of Ballina and will be sorely missed by the community. 

This week, The Lismore App pays tribute to his life and work as we re-publish this edited transcript of a talk Digby Moran gave at the Lismore Library on August 3, 2018.

I'm Albert. Everyone knew me growing up as Albert. I was born in Ballina Hospital in 1948 and I grew up on Cabbage Tree island. There was no bridge when I was growing up. Just a boat to take us across to the mainland.

Probably the best times of my life growing up on the island there as a little kid - free and nothing to worry about. We were always in the river swimming and getting up to mischief, doing stuff.

My mother was a Bolt, Edna Bolt and she married my father Edward Moran, from down Kempsey way. My father and grandmother came up from Kempsey in a horse cart and he met my mother at Byron Bay.

There were nine of us, four girls and five boys My eldest sister was the first to have a kidney transplant, in Sydney. But it wasn't successful.

We were a very close family. We still are. All the rellies still get together and do stuff.

Everyone looked after each other on the island. No squabbles, no arguments. Everyone was happy. There was a caretaker on the island who looked after everything, at least in my time.

We used to have a lot of fun on the river banks. Doing stuff, mucking around in the mud and swimming. We’d catch prawns with a bit of bait in between your fingers. The prawn used to come and we were pretty quick and cluey, the young fellas, we would just pull them straight out of the water.

We used to play rounders in the middle of the paddock and just before dark you'd hear a whistle. Every family on the island had a whistle, and everyone knew their own whistle. Three whistles and you had to be home by the third whistle. Not like today. It was pretty strict when were young. Good times.

The school on the island had about 30 kids. The teacher would come up from Ballina. Every morning, the caretaker would pick them up in the launch and take them back every evening.

I grew up with boxing gloves on, with a football and a cane knife in my hand.

We used to play football at Woodburn when we went to school and travelled to Ballina on the Flemings bus and play in a competition down there.

When I left Ballina High School I got out in the cane fields. Everyone worked cutting cane back then. There was none of this bloody machinery. It was all done by hand. I cut a lot of cane. Met a lot of people. I've still got friends from back in those days.

My dad was a boxer. He was heavyweight champion of the North Coast and he fought a lot of top boxers from America. He used to come and do all the Shows in Lismore with Big Les. Big Les fought my father in Newcastle Stadium. Big Les was 22 stone. Dad fought him in Newcastle Stadium for the heavyweight title and they fought a draw down there. 

We always used to box around with the gloves as kids and when I grew up I used to fight a bit of amateur boxing in Ballina and then when the shows would come up I'd fight at the shows up here in Lismore, Mullumbimby, Casino. 

We were up in Brisbane doing an exhibition up there with Jimmy Sharman one time and Big Les said: “I'm having a break so you can go with Jimmy”, who was going back down to Melbourne. 

Jimmy Sharman had a big red bus and we done all the shows down to Melbourne. 

There was an Australian champion down there name of Bindi Jack. He was the bantamweight Australian title holder and wanted me to stay down there and train down there in boxing. And I met a lady friend down there, she was an English girl, but I was young and silly and I couldn't sit still in one place. I had to keep moving and I ended coming back home. And that was it. That was in 1967. And I've never been back. I got in with Doris King and we had three girls and one boy and that was it.

When I was in my 40s I stopped doing other silly stuff and started painting. I was a bit of a larrakin growing up. I drank a bit. Alcohol. When you're young, you do a lot of stuff. I had a spiritual awareness when I was about 40 years of age.

I come home one night I and was out the back of the house and I was talking in tongues, in language, and I'd never spoken language in my life and something spiritually got into me. After that when I went to the pub and ordered a beer and I got the beer to [just in front of my lips] I couldn't lift that beer any further. I tired to lift it and something would not let me drink it. You might think I'm crazy but I know what happened. I tried a few times.

I was in a relationship and you know what you do when a relationship breaks up? That'll fix me. Solve the problem. Same thing again. A lot of people don't believe me. But I know in my own heart what really happened to me.

Most of the stuff I paint about is things I see around. I do a lot of stories about fishing and other stuff. I love doing my work.

When I was a young fella growing up I used to watch my grandfather, he used to make walking sticks and boomerangs and he'd have the fire going and he'd have about half a dozen hot irons in the fire and he'd pull one out and burn the designs. And that's what he did and I used to be always there with him, watching. It was always in me. Just waiting.

I can tell you a lot of things I've seen on that island that people think I'm crazy or mad. But I don't care what they think. I know what I saw and that's it.

Some of them come into the paintings. Some of them I just keep to myself.

One time when I was a young fella I was walking around and I couldn't find my boys at the top of the island so I went down to the bottom and I came to this big clearing and this figure came straight towards me, all red and brown and hairy with like an ape face. I just kept walking and he kept walking until we were face to face. I looked behind him and there was a female behind him and back further there was a small one, like they were a family. I had a good look. Then I turned around and walked away. And I never spoke about that Yowie until I was 40 years of age, when I started painting.

I was mucking around at my mum's place early one morning. And she come in and I started to talk and tell her about these things and she said: “Only special people see those things, and you're special.” That stuck with me.

I'd see things out there but I wouldn't talk about that stuff. People would think: “He's losing it this bloke”. I'm glad I left it. People would have been tormenting you, like when you're a kid. Kids torment you. Get in fights and everything.

I'll write a book one day, if someone will sit down and listen to me.

I see things all around me when I relax and paint. I know I'm watched and looked after. There are people around me every time I paint.

How I went to Germany is, I had a friend up in Mullum who was from Germany and a friend of his come over from there, and my friend wanted me to take them around and see some Aboriginal sites and one particular place was a midden at Ballina.

I took them there, and my mate’s friend just couldn't get over it - all the shells and oysters. I only take special people in there. We were coming back out and she keeps saying to her husband: “I can see them, they're all over the place!”. She could see the ancestors because she was a spiritual person. And she said when I go back, I'm going to do something special for you, I'm going to do something special.

She was an artist herself and she got these exhibitions for me over there.

And that's how I went over there. I enjoyed the place and the people. Maria and her family, couldn't wish for better people.

They make you feel comfortable - took me all around and showed me their culture, all the old castles. It was good. I enjoyed every moment.

I had another friend in Austria, who flew me over there to Austria with some work. I stayed on his property, on a farm outside of Vienna, with all the cows and horses and a big stable. In the early morning, I walked up to the top of the hill and looking down and I couldn't work out what was all this colour, and it was tulips. All different colours. It was beautiful. Looking from up there, looking down.

There was stuff there, I wouldn't have thought I'd ever be in places like that, especially as a kid growing up on the island.