[6] McGinness remembered his time there unfavourably and recalled grim living conditions, substandard food and a poor standard of education stating that he never had any tuition.
In the later part of the 1930s he spent some time working at the Darwin Hospital, in various roles, where he developed a friendship with the then pharmacist Xavier Herbert who, it is said, used McGinness as the inspiration of the character of Norman Shillingsworth in his novel Capricornia (1938).
[15][1] During this period McGinness knew Cecil Cook, who was then working as the Chief Protector of Aborigines, well and said of him: "I couldn’t say anything very good about him.
[19][5] In 2017 McGinness, alongside his brothers Jack and Joe, and other members of his community working with Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education to revitalise the Kungarakany language.
This project was led by his niece Wetjey Koormundum (Ida Bishop) and together they collected a number of language recordings.
[1] He is the grandfather/great-uncle of Darwin based Larrakia woman and musician Ali Mills who performs some songs written by McGinness.