The last of the nomads came in from the desert 22 years ago. Nigel Adam goes into the Outback to see how they are faring in the modern world.

THE old warrior, looking theatrical in his psychedelic Jesus T-shirt, had enjoyed two long, hard nights on the town and was not really in the mood for talking.

But Warlinipirri Tjapaltjarri was well raised and, despite his terrible hangover, was willing to give the visitors a few minutes to recall the day he first saw a white man.

"I couldn't believe it," Warlinipirri said through an interpreter.

"I thought he was the devil, a bad spirit. He was the colour of clouds at sunrise."

His sister, Yardi, thought the white fella was a "punishment spirit" -- sent to chastise her for something she had done wrong.

"I was very frightened," Yardi said.

The white man was, in fact, Circus Oz performer Geoff Tull, who had driven into the Western Desert to bring in the last of the nomads.

Mr Tull also clearly remembers that dramatic day in October 1984 -- that first contact between the Stone Age and modern society.

"It was the most extraordinary day of my life," he said.

One of the first things Mr Tull did was take a couple of the male nomads for a drive in his Toyota.

"We hammered across a huge claypan at 80km/h with the latest Midnight Oil album blaring out of the cassette player," he said..

"I stopped when I realised they were frozen with fear."

Warlinipirri, his three brothers, Walala, Thomas and Yari Yari, three sisters, Yardi, Yikuljti and Tjakaraia, and two "mothers", Nanyanu and Papalanyanu, were the last Aborigines living a traditional nomadic existence.

They became known as the Pintupi Nine.

All were born in the desert. None knows their exact age.

The brothers were aged between about 14 and 20 when they "came in". The girls were all in their teens, the mothers in their late 30s.

They roamed between waterholes near Lake Mackay in Central Australia, naked except for human-hair belts, armed with 2m spears and intricately carved boomerangs.

Walala said they lived a simple life, staying at a waterhole until it dried up and then moving to another. Their diet was mostly goanna and rabbit.

None of the family had any concept of white men. They still speak only Pintupi.

How has the lost tribe fared since coming out of the wilderness 22 years ago?

All the brothers and sisters are artists. A painting by Warlinipirri has sold for $85,000; others are in the National Gallery in Canberra and the National Gallery of Victoria. One even hangs in a Paris gallery.

Large works by Walala and Thomas sell for at least $6000 in Alice Springs and $9500 in the swank galleries in Melbourne and Sydney.

The artistic brothers like a beer, but still seem reasonably healthy.

Reports that Walala is a chronic alcoholic seem untrue. in fact, he is the most prolific painter of the brothers and can earn $2000 a day.

But fame in the art world doesn't translate into a fat bank balance in Aboriginal society.

None of the Tjapaltjarri clan has any money.

It goes out as fast as it comes in, supporting a network of relatives stretching from Hoppy's Camp in Alice to desert communities across the border in Western Australia.

Yikuljti is in Alice Springs Hospital with kidney problems and one of the mothers has died.

The encounter between two worlds began innocently enough.

The family was out hunting when Warlinipirri saw a campfire in the distance at Wintarrku, about 500km west of Alice Springs.

He was the oldest brother and had become leader of the clan after his father, husband of the two wives, died in the desert a few months earlier.

Warlinipirri approached the camp and saw an Aboriginal family cooking near a four-wheel drive. He asked for water.

The camp, which had underground water nearby, belonged to Pinta Pinta, who was to become a celebrated artist.

He was terrified, even though he had walked out of the desert himself only 20 years earlier and was related to Warlinipirri.

Looking back, Warlinipirri admits he must have been a scary sight -- a naked wild man armed with a spear appearing suddenly out of the dusk.

Pinta Pinta pumped up water.

"It was strange -- he gave me water like this," said Warlinipirri, performing a pumping action with his right arm.

Meanwhile, Pinta Pinta's son had grabbed his dad's rifle. He fired a shot in the air.

"I had never heard gunfire," said Warlinipirri. "I was frightened and ran off."

Fearing they would be followed, the Tjapaltjarris fled to where they felt safest -- the vastness of the Gibson Desert.

Pinta Pinta and his family rushed to Kintore, about 40 minutes' drive away, and woke up community co-ordinator Charlie McMahon, now recognised as Australia's finest didgeridoo player.

"They were incredibly excited -- Pinta Pinta thought he had seen the devil," Mr McMahon said.

"The next day we all went out to Wintarrku and, after a while, Pinta Pinta's family began shouting ecstatically, 'Real man, real man!'

"They had found Warlinipirri's tracks and realised he wasn't a devil, but a desert nomad.

"We followed the tracks all day and all night in a LandCruiser."

Mr McMahon turned back when he got low on fuel, driving back to Kintore across the trackless Outback by the stars.

The next day, he sent out another search party, led by an old mate, Geoff Tull, and radio-telephoned the Aboriginal Affairs Department in Canberra to give the dramatic news: "We have a first contact here."

Mr Tull and his party teamed up with Pinta Pinta and tracked the Tjapaltjarris to their favourite waterhole near Lake Mackay, which straddles the Northern Territory-Western Australia border.

The family were away hunting and gathering, so the trackers collected the spears lying around the camp, hid them -- and waited.

The trackers, obviously enjoying themselves, had covered Mr Tull with a blanket.

Warlinipirri led his family back into the camp, the trackers pulled away the blanket and there was the strangest of sights -- a pink man.

"They looked at me astonished and I looked back at them just as astonished," Mr Tull said.

"I had just returned from performing at the Los Angeles Olympics and there I was with desert nomads.

"The black trackers put their arms around me and said, 'Don't worry. He won't hurt you -- he's just a white bloke'.

"We opened a tin of jam for them and broke off pieces of chocolate.

"They couldn't believe what they were seeing."

Yardi remembers the terror of the meeting. "We were all very scared," she said.

"But the Aboriginal trackers told us not to be frightened, that we were all family, that they wouldn't hurt us."

The Tjapaltjarris were persuaded to go with the search party to Kintore, about 250km south.

"They told us there was plenty of food and water came out of pipes," Yardi said.

The family was driven to a doctor for a medical examination.

"They were all in beautiful condition," Mr McMahon said.

"Not an ounce of fat, well proportioned, strong, fit, healthy."

When the family were driven from the doctor at Kintore 27km to the smaller community of Kwiwikurra, the nomads ritually beat members of their extended families with sticks for not bringing them in from the desert earlier.

"The older ones were angry that their long-lost relatives – who they had not seen for nearly 20 years – had left them out in the desert eating lizards while they lived in what they saw as the lap of luxury," Mr Tull said.

Alison Anderson, now a member of the Legislative Assembly, remembers the clan being brought to the Yuendemu sports carnival a few weeks later.

"They bought ice creams from a van but weren't sure what they were. They just stared at them," Ms Anderson said.

What made the nomads give up their life in the desert?

"They knew they had no future," Mr McMahon said.

"They were all closely related – there were no women for the men and no men for the women. They were going to die out."

One of the brothers, Yari Yari, lived at Kwiwikurra for two years before slipping back into the desert.

"He thought he would die from white fella diseases," said Lutheran pastor Jim Inkamala.

The three sisters and surviving mother have settled at Kwiwikurra.

The three brothers spend most of their time in Alice Springs and paint at a property on the outskirts of town.

Walala and Thomas live at Hoppy's Camp, and Warlinipirri lives at a camp by the Todd River.

None of the nomads regrets coming in from the desert.

"I like this life," Yardi said. "I much prefer it to the old ways."

Warlinipirri said: "I wouldn't go back."

Melbourne art dealer Kit Ballan, who was in the Alice buying paintings when I met Warlinipirri, said: "We see the nomadic life in the desert as utopian.

"But, in reality, it would have been hard beyond our imagining.

"Every day would have been dominated by the search for food and water."

When the Tjapaltjarri family die, the umbilical cord to a culture at least 55,000 years old – the oldest surviving culture on Earth – will have been broken. Or will it?

Just as I was about to leave Kwiwikurra, Yadi spoke of a warrior who still lived in the desert.

"He wouldn't come near us in the old days," she said.

Pastor Inkamala said Kwiwikurra people occasionally saw his tracks while on 4WD hunting expeditions for kangaroo and bustard.

Originally published as Lost tribe happy in modern world