Nelly Patterson
Nelly Patterson was born out in the bush in 1938. She grew up as a traditional Anangu girl near Pipalyatjara, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, with no whitefellas or roads nearby.
The first white men she saw were camel workers passing through. Later, missionaries arrived, and she remembered coming into Ernabella, seeing people wearing clothes, and feeling scared.
Nelly later moved to Areyonga, near Hermannsburg in the Northern Territory, where she lived for nearly eighteen years and worked with pottery. She then lived in Jay Creek, where her grandfather was from.
She travelled extensively and moved back and forth to Adelaide while helping raise her grandchildren. She lived permanently in Adelaide.
As a senior traditional woman, Nelly was a custodian of stories and law that had sustained her people for generations.