Indigenous Australia

Yilari Balalaman (c. 1886–1970), better known as Quilp, stockman, artist, and cultural intermediary, was born around 1886, most likely on Wardaman Country in the Victoria River District (VRD) south-west of Katherine, Northern Territory. Oral histories suggest that he was taken from his homeland as a child, following a massacre—an experience not uncommon during the settler expansion of the late nineteenth century. The buffalo shooter Paddy Cahill claimed to have ‘rescued’ him. However, according to ‘Kulumput,’ a senior Wardaman informant, Cahill was directly implicated in a massacre in the VRD around that time: ‘the Bulinara [Bilinarra] tribe was then “yarded up in a cave” by the famous Paddy Cahill, who then “shot the whole blooming lot”’ (Arndt 1965, 245). Cahill gave Yilari the name Quilp, most likely after a popular racehorse of the time.

Despite this traumatic beginning, Quilp adapted to life with Cahill. Initially working in Cahill’s buffalo hunting enterprise, he quickly gained a reputation as a skilled horseman and stockman. By 1899, aged just thirteen, he was conducting horseback missions to deliver urgent news. A dramatic episode that year saw him save Cahill’s business partner, William Johnston, after he was gored by a buffalo, riding several horses over 50 miles (80.4 km) to fetch help.

Suspected to have contracted leprosy, Quilp was abandoned by Cahill for a few years around 1901. He was soon adopted, however, by Arnhem Land leaders, including Nadambala (Rambler Cahill) of the Bunitj clan, and Marakarra Gumurdul (Nipper) of the Mandjulngunj clan, the senior traditional owner for Gunbalanya (Oenpelli). Nadambala treated Quilp as a son alongside his biological son, Big Bill Neidjie (c. 1913–2002). These relationships grounded Quilp within local kinship systems and positioned him within influential clan networks. Oral histories with Gunbalanya community members affirm him as a brother and father figure within their social worlds.

Quilp resumed contact with Cahill, becoming his most trusted offsider. Cahill settled at Oenpelli in west Arnhem Land in 1910, establishing a cattle station there. The anthropologist Baldwin Spencer visited the station in 1912 and Quilp was one of several Aboriginal artists commissioned to produce bark paintings over the next few years. Though the artworks are not individually labelled, Cahill wrote to Spencer in 1916 confirming that Quilp had earned £20 for his works. This sum alone suggests that his role was significant. It also places Quilp among the first Aboriginal artists to be commercially recognised in this emerging market, a little-explored dimension of early twentieth-century Aboriginal art history. Quilp is also credited with a rare contact-period rock painting depicting a horse’s head, complete with reins—a striking example of post-contact imagery reflecting Aboriginal engagement with introduced animals and technologies. Located in a rock shelter near Oenpelli, it was probably created between 1910 and the early 1930s.

In 1918 Cahill stated that Quilp did ‘most of the buffalo shooting for beef, and [was] always to the fore with stock movements, droving, &c’ at Oenpelli (Northern Territory 1918, 47). Quilp travelled with his employer to Darwin, Adelaide, and Melbourne in 1919. In Adelaide he entered a swimming carnival at the city baths where his skills were much admired: ‘[he] remained under the water on one occasion for 53 1/2 seconds and … also “submarined” a length of the baths’ (Express and Telegraph 1919, 4).

Back at Oenpelli, Quilp acted as an intermediary between Cahill and the local Aboriginal workforce and was one of only a few Aboriginal stockmen to earn a wage. The author and buffalo shooter Carl Warburton visited Oenpelli in the early 1920s and later described Quilp as ‘authoritative, and his methods business-like’ (Warburton 1934, 143). When the Church Missionary Society took over control of Oenpelli in 1925, wage labour was abolished, and Aboriginal workers, including Quilp, were retained for rations only. Illustrating the shifting roles Aboriginal people navigated under colonial and religious regimes, Quilp continued to work closely with the missionaries, one of whom thought him ‘not far from the Kingdom’ (cited in May et al. 2021, 218), referring to his potential for conversion to Christianity. Quilp culturally married Maggie Mugurula (Magarorda, Margurulu, Muk-errula) at Oenpelli in about 1927 and for the next few years they lived and worked at the mission, becoming highly respected members of the community.

Quilp left Oenpelli in the early 1930s. From then until the mid-1960s, when he returned to the mission, little is known of his life. Predeceased by Maggie, he died at Oenpelli and was buried in the mission cemetery on 14 June 1970. His relationships, movements, and memories connected disparate regions and histories, from Wardaman Country in the VRD to the buffalo camps and mission life of western Arnhem Land. Embodying both the violence of frontier encounters and the resilience of those who survived them, his life history highlights how individual experiences can contribute to more accurate, nuanced, and grounded accounts of Australia’s past.

Sally K. May is Australian and Joakim Goldhahn is of Swedish descent. May and Goldhahn were living on Kaurna Country when the article was written. Graham Badari is Warddjak clan. His family cared for Quilp in his old age.