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.
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