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Badger Bates: ‘I feel like I’m very lucky, even though I’m no millionaire’
The Barkandji artist shares the story behind the giant steel serpent he has made for the 2022 Sydney biennale, and how it feeds into his wider fight for water rights
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastAfter the floods, the Barka (Darling River) looks “beautiful” again, says Barkandji artist William “Badger” Bates. So recognisable with his bush hat and grey moustache, the 74-year-old has dedicated his artistic life to saving the Barka. Following years of prolonged drought and the ongoing allocation of thousands of gigalitres of water to irrigation in the Murray-Darling basin, “you wouldn’t think it was the same river,” he says. But given the floods’ trail of death and destruction, “we did not win – everyone got flooded out.”
Born in the town of Wilcannia in north-western New South Wales, Bates was raised on the Barka by his grandmother Annie – a revered matriarch known as Grannie Moysey – and his mother Emily. Together with his older brother, they all lived on the river in a small pair of corrugated tin huts.
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