Big John Dodo

[2] His work included "branding, fencing, maintaining water supplies and droving cattle to Meekatharra in a trip on horseback that could take 12 to 16 weeks".

[3] After settling at Bidyadanga, Dodo played a key role in maintaining a distinct cultural identity for the Karajarri following the state government's forcible resettlement of Mangarla and Nyigina people from the Great Sandy Desert at the La Grange mission.

[9][10] Federal Court judge Anthony North held evidentiary hearings at Bidyadanga, where Dodo – aged 90 – gave evidence of locations he had visited as a child with his parents and of the relationships between physical places and the Karajarri pukarrikarra (Dreaming).

[1] Dodo's primary source of sandstone was Mount Phire (Karajarri: Payarr), a small hill located near Eighty Mile Beach around 96 kilometres (60 mi) south of Bidyadanga.

The hill was surrounded by scattered pieces of stone, which according to Dodo's account of the Karajarri Dreaming were made when an ancestral family violated a taboo around consuming goanna eggs.

[13] According to anthropologist John Stanton, this represented "an incredible amount of money in a period of high unemployment for Australia, and for remote Aboriginal people who were among the most impoverished in the country".