After almost 40 years, an iconic piece of history in Alice Springs is being brought back to life in the centre of the remote town. Local Indigenous artists who were brought on board to paint two murals on a shopping centre's exterior have returned to restore the sun-faded artworks to their former glory.
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00:00Red desert sands, spinifex grass and bush foods, an ancient scene from Ardenda culture
00:08with an ever-present connection to country.
00:11The pictures on these murals, it's our land.
00:14It's what's on this land that our people go out and hunt, as well as what's actually
00:21out there for our people that lived on the land.
00:24Joyce McLaughlin was just a teenager when she painted these murals in the Alice Springs
00:28CBD.
00:2937 years later, she still remembers pouring pride into every brushstroke.
00:34I remembered being there with a lot of old ladies, another cousin of mine and some of
00:40the younger ones.
00:43Families to them were there, yeah, it was really good.
00:47The restoration project at Ypirrinya Shopping Centre is part of a broader effort to revitalise
00:52the town, where colour tends to fade under the harsh desert sun.
00:56The full restoration process of sanding the boards, cleaning them, repainting them entirely
01:01was needed, in the sense that you could see the original concrete underneath the paint.
01:07That's the state of what they were.
01:08Now the murals Melanie grew up with are just as she remembers them.
01:13As a young artist, born and raised in Alice Springs, I looked at these murals ever since
01:17I was a little kid and I loved them all the time.
01:19I used to point out all the little elements that I loved to my parents.
01:23With both murals now restored, they're once again a part of the town's shared identity,
01:28threading community, culture and history.