Territory Stories

Mona Byrnes

Details:

Title

Mona Byrnes,

Creator

Byrnes, Mona Dora, Johannsen, Mona Dora,

Name

Mona Byrnes,

Collection

Territory Women, HistoryNT,

Place of birth

Hermannsburg,

Date of birth

1923-10-23,

Occupation

Photographer, Artist,

Date of death

2010-07-25,

Place of death

Alice Springs,

Biographical notes

Mona was born and bred in the 'dead heart dust and dead mulga' centre of the Northern Territory. Her parents were Mr Gerhardt A. Johannsen and Ottilie (Tilly) Johannsen. In the late 1920s and 1930s she saw her family walk off their station at Deep Well, south of Alice Springs in a state of near destitution because of the drought .Mona married Desmond Byrnes, they had four children and owned a caravan park and tourist business in Alice Springs. Mona was a keen photographer and her photographs appeared in magazines such as the Walkabout and Pix unfortunately in the 1950s, a house fire destroyed a lot of her photographic work of that period. Mona was then encouraged to paint and became involved with several art foundations in Central Australia. She organised the Alice Prize for one of them, the Alice Springs Art Foundation. Mona has inspired and helped people to paint in the Alice Spring Region. She was militant in her efforts to protect the rights of the pastoralists and to see justice done for the dying land around the centre of Australia.,

Subject

Women, Northern Territory,

Related materials

"Prophesies Exodus from Centre", The Advertiser," 7 April 1965, p.30., "Quilt marks birth right", Alice springs News, 13 May 2008, p.7.,

Related links

http://hdl.handle.net/10070/212871, http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21201734, http://hdl.handle.net/10070/212871 [The Consumer, the newsletter of the Consumer Affairs Council, December 2003], http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21201734 [Germaine, Max. A Dictionary of Women Artists of Australia. Tortola, BVI: Craftsman House BVI ; Roseville East, N.S.W. : distributed in Australia by Craftsman House, 1991.],

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/227731,