Minnie Lumai
Minnie Lumai
BORN
C. 1941, NEWRY STATION, NT
DIED
2025, GOONOONOORRANG (KUNUNURRA), WA
COUNTRY
MIRIWOONG
COMMUNITY
THAMBERALM (BUBBLE BUBBLE), WA
LANGUAGE
MIRIWOONG
About
Reflecting back on her career, Minnie Lumai remembered how it took decades to find her way to painting. As a kid she looked after the goats and milked the cows at Newry Station before she married and moved to Argyle Homestead. After marriage, she worked in the house making bread and then came her kids who she raised in Goonoonoorrang (Kununurra). It wasn’t until 2004, in her sixties, that she first picked up a brush.
“I had been watching all those people painting at the art centre [in Kununurra] – every morning I watched them and I asked my sister if I could come and paint.”
In the years that followed, she spent her time weaving stories of Country, culture and the land she once worked on into her paintings. Her work is now held in major collections including the National Library of Australia and Australian High Commission London.
WORK
Minnie has painted traditional country at Binjin – Bucket Springs in the Keep River National Park area east of Goonoonoorrang (Kununurra). A freshwater spring bubbles up from a rocky ridge at the top of the painting, its gentle sound echoing the lu-mai, lu-mai rhythm of the artist’s own name. The creek flows down through undulating hilly country, before joining the Keep River below.
The painting captures the living landscape of this significant cultural site, with boab trees and white gums flourishing throughout the area. Minnie’s fluid brushwork traces the natural pathways of water as it moves through Country, connecting the spiritual source of the spring to the broader river system. Her depiction reveals both the physical geography and “the way the land is from the dreaming”, where generations of her people have travelled to access this vital freshwater source.
Through her distinctive artistic style, Minnie transforms the topographical features into a vibrant story of Country and culture.
