In 1984 the last nomadic group of Pintupi people eventually made their way to an Aboriginal community to be reunited with relatives they hadn't seen for decades. The travellers had never worn clothes or seen a motor vehicle and they thought the aeroplanes they had observed flying overhead were 'mamu' (ghosts). This event marked the final chapter in a saga which for the rest of the Pintupi and their neighbours had begun some fifty years earlier, when European settlement first began to encroach on their lives.¹

Thomas, along with his brothers Walala and Warlimpirringa, were a part of this group of nine that was to be dubbed by the media “the last nomads”. The three brothers soon began to paint and have each now developed a personal style, often depicting stories concerning the Tingari cycle.