The Milgarri collection relates to individuals and family groups associated with an Indigenous community nine miles East of the Darwin CBD. While possessing the Aboriginal name Milgarri (a word from Daly River, meaning ‘water lily’), this community is also known as Knuckey’s, or Knuckey’s Lagoon; the suburb in which it is geographically located.

As a collection, Milgarri showcases the connections the photographer developed from his initial participation in the Eye-See Workshop (April, 2013), and subsequent accompaniment of Robert E. Lewis.

By recurrently photographing the outreach programs Rob delivered, on behalf of his then-employing organisation, the friendships Walton-Healey came to share with participants extended to associated family groups. The Milgarri collection foregrounds this relationality, and in this way attempts a new way of seeing the presumed association between Darwin’s ‘visiting’ (non-Larrakia) population and the city’s so-called ‘‘itinerant’ problem’ (Spencer, 2005)*.

* Spencer, S. (2005). Contested Homelands: Darwin’s ”Itinerant Problem.” Pacific Journalism Review, 11(1), 174-197.

** Permission to publish the photographs of Phillip Jangala and Joseph Garadji-Thompson has been provided by The Garadji Family.