Mission Fruits by Cissy Unghangu

Cissy: “I drew the fruit that we used to have back in the old days, during the mission times. The mission people planted a fruit orchard. There were so many fruits - banana, watermelon, cashew nut, pineapple, tomato. When I was growing up we still had big mob of fruits to try - I loved the cashew nut tree. Now there’s mostly just lots of mangos. This is all way before my time - so I get Rosa (who’s an elder) to help tell the story.

Rosa: “The mission garden had a lot of fresh veggies, fresh fruits. We did peanut farming too. Pineapples, mangos, dates, custard apples, tropical fruits: paw paws, bananas, we had everything down at the mission. Beetroots, carrots, silverbeets, capsicums, lettuce, you name it - we had everything here. It was our garden of Eden. We all helped in the garden after school.”

Cissy: “When I see my design - how it got put on the computer - I feel good. It will look good on the clothes because of the colour. It will be all kinds of colours, because of the fruit. I can't wait to see.”

Read artist profile

“I drew the fruit that we used to have back in the old days, during the mission times. ”