You may have encountered Trevor 'Turbo' Brown on the streets of Melbourne, if he tried to flog you still-wet paintings of crafty-looking cockatoos or dogs with feral grins.

Or you may have seen his art on show at prestigious galleries, selling for thousands of dollars.

But you might not know that the bright, dynamic portrayals of animals Turbo is known for allude to his earlier, lonely years; when he was homeless, he considered them his only friends.

And while the prize-winning Aboriginal artist died in 2017, his legacy remains: on Melbourne streets, and in galleries in Australia and overseas.

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware this story contains images of Indigenous people who have died.

I first learned about Turbo when a friend asked to store one of the artist's paintings in my garage.

A huge wombat with ears like Sturt's desert peas, a red-backed spider for a nose and claws like a Tassie devil — the painting is so alive.

It's also slightly unbalanced, so that you feel the large rump of the wombat may slide off and land on you at any moment.

I became immensely curious about the artist who created this anarchic creature.

'He was special. He still is'

Trevor Brown's dynamic portrayals of animals won international acclaim. ( Supplied: Nick Kreisler )

Turbo was of the Latje Latje people of inland Victoria. Born with a cleft palate, he grew up almost unable to speak.

He spent much of his youth on the streets and riverbanks of Mildura.

Turbo later described having animals as his only friends during this time.

He often said that they continued to come to him in his dreams and told his manager, Nick Kreisler: "When I paint I feel like I'm in the Dreamtime and can see all the animals and birds that live there."

Turbo Brown had a particularly affinity for painting animals. ( Supplied: Nick Kreisler )

It wasn't until he was 15, homeless and sleeping under houses and with dogs to keep warm, that a local police sergeant stepped in to try to help.

That officer introduced Turbo to Uncle Herb Patten and his strong-minded wife, Aunty Bunta, who ran a hostel and college for Aboriginal youths in Melbourne.

They were in Mildura to investigate setting up a second hostel when the officer told them that Turbo was homeless and in danger of heading straight to jail. He was stealing food to survive.

The couple unofficially adopted the teenager.

"We brought back him to Melbourne where we had his cleft palate operated on. We fixed his teeth; we got him clothes," Uncle Herb says.

"The clothes he was wearing he'd probably been wearing for years.

"He'd never had a bath, he wasn't toilet trained, he couldn't read.

"We knew we had a big job ahead of us."

Uncle Herb and Aunty Bunta saw it as a job worth doing.

"Turbo was one that just stuck out from the rest. He was special. He still is."

An unlikely career

Turbo had no thought of becoming an artist when he moved to Melbourne. It was chance that gave him the opportunity to try.

In the early 2000s, Aunty Bunta and Uncle Herb lost funding for their Aboriginal youth hostel and Koori College. Not inclined to sit at home, they began enrolling in university courses at RMIT.

"We said to Turbo one day, 'You've got to do something. Come to university and learn a bit of art!'" Uncle Herb says.

"Within the first fortnight everybody started to take notice because he had a unique way of doing things. So sweet, so gentle.

"The critics said, 'so innocent', and when RMIT had the first student exhibition, all 30 of his paintings sold in 25 minutes. They went all around the world."

Turbo's career as an artist was launched.

His first solo show was at the Koori Heritage Trust. It was a sell-out.

He became a regular finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, and in 2012 he won the Deadly Art Award, the main prize in the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards.

It came with a $25,000 prize cheque.

"I think it was an incredible moment for him," says Turbo's former manager, Nick Kreisler.

Turbo Brown's legacy will continue: on Melbourne streets, as well as galleries. ( Supplied: Nick Kreisler )

Turbo's greatest exhibition was at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at the Melbourne Museum. The show was called Last Man Standing, and during the seven months it was on, a million people came through its doors.

Kimberley Moulton, senior curator of South Eastern Aboriginal Collections at Museums Victoria, curated the show.

"Turbo was a genius," she says.

"Not only the way he applied the paint on the canvas but the way he told his stories. I loved watching him work."

Turbo's legacy

But despite the awards, the big shows and selling paintings for large sums to the most prestigious galleries in the country, Turbo was always short of money, largely because of his serious poker machine habit.

Gambling, combined with months-long delays between payments from large galleries, kept him on the streets of Brunswick in Melbourne, painting every day for a quick cash sale.

Today, the streets, shops and cafes around Brunswick are peppered with Turbo's painted animals: huge, terrifying, yet somehow lovingly maternal koalas protecting their young; pairs of eagles racing across the sky, searching for their lost child.

I found a giant wombat, much like the one on my living room wall, in the window of a tarot card reading shop.

Turbo was a prolific artist.

He lived hard, painted every day as though he was on a mission, and died too young, at just 49.

But his extraordinary animals remain, ensuring he won't be forgotten.