Well-known artist sleeping on ground with a dozen dogs for warmth – NEWS.com.au

Renowned Aboriginal artist Kathleen Ngale is living rough in Utopia homelands. CREDIT: ABC

The well-known 87-year-old artist sleeps rough in a pile of blankets surrounded by dogs to keep her warm.

CALLS are growing to help an 87-year-old artist who is sleeping rough with a dozen dogs to keep her warm in a region known as Utopia.

Kathleen Ngale whose work has been exhibited in New York, London and Paris lives in heartbreaking conditions lying on a pile of blankets in Camel Camp, around 260 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. She cannot walk or wash herself and has to wait for people to bring her small amounts of food.

I sit here hungry sometimes, and we sit here with nothing, she told the ABC in a heartbreaking video. My leg is no good I just wait for little bits of food and I cant go and wash myself when I feel like it.

Kathleen Ngale, a well-known artist, sleeps rough in a pile of blankets surrounded by dogs to keep her warm.Source:ABC

Ms Ngales primary carer is her husband, also in his 80s, and she is occasionally visited by a nurse based around 50km away, and receives weekly deliveries of soup, according to her granddaughter Denisa.

Her relative Rosalie Kunoth-Monks told the broadcaster there needed to be better aged care for Aboriginal people in the region, and that Ms Ngale should have a wheelchair and be able to wash her clothes.

The Federal Government funds the Barkly Shire Council, based in Tennant Creek about 400km away, to provide aged care services in Utopia. Acting CEO Chris Wright told the ABC meals were provided daily in the main homeland in Arlparra but only every few days in the remoter areas, with just one full-time worker and several part-time staff members serving several hundred kilometres.

The frail 87-year-old cannot walk or wash herself and says she sometimes goes hungry.Source:ABC

Ms Kunoth-Monks claimed in April last year that elderly people were starving because of a lack of daily meals, but her allegation was dismissed as mischief-making and political grandstanding by the president of the Barkly Shire Council.

She alleged that the whole community including children and the elderly go without food, often on a daily basis and that one elderly man with end-stage Parkinsons disease had received a package containing two packets of horrible-looking mince meat and white bread which was like eating paper with no nutritional value, while two neighbouring elderly women received nothing.

Ms Kunoth-Monks characterised the packages as the bare minimum to sustain life.

What I saw appalled me, even my dogs are fed a hell of a lot better than old black people are being fed, she told AAP.

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Well-known artist sleeping on ground with a dozen dogs for warmth - NEWS.com.au