Gordon woman and Wadawurrung elder Aunty Marlene Gilson first started painting in her late 60s, and within a year she was an exhibiting artist.
Ms Gilson had asked her children to help keep her occupied while she was unwell, so her son Barry gave her a wooden train set to paint for her grandchildren, while her daughter Deanne left her with a blank canvas.
Later that year, in 2012, her paintings were exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, alongside Deanne's work.
Three years later she won the People's Choice Award at the 2015 Victorian Indigenous Art Awards for her large-scale painting Bunjil's Final Resting Place, Race Meeting at Lal Lal Falls.
Ten years on from her first brush stroke, Ms Gilson's work is being projected onto the Sydney Opera House and is featured in art galleries across the country.
"When Deanne first gave me the canvas, I said 'I don't know how to paint on it'," Ms Gilson said.
"Now I just keep painting."
Sharing stories from the goldfields
Art has given Ms Gilson a way to share stories from her culture, including those her grandmother told her as a child.
Ms Gilson is a descendant of King Billy, an Indigenous tribal leader of the Ballarat region at the time of the Eureka Stockade, and his wife Queen Mary.
Many of her paintings tell stories of the goldfields, including her painting of Mount Warrenheip and the Eureka Stockade that is at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
She said she aimed to create a new focus on the involvement of Aboriginal people in significant historical events.
Ms Gilson said she painted the Eureka Stockade — a rebellion in 1854 by goldfield workers against the cost of a miners' licence — from her grandmother's stories.
"When the fighting broke out, some of the children and women ran to the Aboriginal camp," she said.
"George Yuille (a white man) lived with one of the Aboriginal women in the camp, so it wasn't scary for the children to run there and be with them."
Ms Gilson's painting Jones Circus at Eureka tells the story of young Wadawurrung men who were recruited to be circus performers.
"That would have been our people," she said.
"I like that story, that is one of my favourites.
Living on country
Ms Gilson has been living on her country in Gordon for 51 years and said she "wouldn't live anywhere else".
She said her children grew up painting, drawing, crafting and singing on the property, and used art as a way to tell cultural stories.
"We had a mine shaft on the property and all the time Deanne used to go up there and get clay off the side of it and make pots — I still have one of her pots somewhere," she said.
Carrying on the legacy
Ms Gilson's son, Barry James Gilson, uses the power of the spoken word to carry on the legacy of sharing his culture with community.
He is known in the region for smoking ceremonies, storytelling events and his powerful voice when singing in language.
He told stories at the National Celtic Festival in Portarlington last month and featured at many NAIDOC Week events across the region.
"We need to educate the public about the stories of colonisation and how we continue to survive," he said.
Mr Gilson will sing and tell stories again at the Meredith Music Festival this year, and performed at Meadow Festival in Bambra, 20 minutes inland of Lorne, in March, as well as A Day On The Green, Rainbow Serpent Festival, and Golden Plains Music Festival.
He said music festivals could be the future of sharing cultural stories.
"There is a hunger for that knowledge, people can't get enough of it," he said.
"Instead of having an MC all the time, why not have a traditional custodian to talk about the history of the place?"
Mr Gilson said singing and speaking in his language in front of thousands of people at these festivals was "electrifying".
"I just feel great educating people on issues of importance," he said.
"You get to a bigger audience at the one time. I think it is maybe the future of aural storytelling in this country.
"We have changed in leaps and bounds in the past decade in the acceptance of our culture and being represented and not pushed to the side.
"The importance of it now is exactly where it should be."
NAIDOC Week is celebrated across the country from July 3 to 10.
