Eileen Wani Wingfield was born in the bush near Ingomar Station, between Coober Pedy and Woomera. She is the daughter of Tim Allen and Maningka (Winnie Allen). Afraid that the welfare officers ('the States') might take their children away, her family moved around the Coober Pedy area and Lake Phillipson, travelling on camels and eating mainly bush tucker except when they were at the stations, keeping away from the roads. They had horses, and Eileen, her father and her sister Alma, sometimes went mustering at the stations.
They were living at Mabel Creek, about 100 km north east of Coober Pedy when the Maralinga nuclear tests took place in October 1953 'and everyone got sick after that'. Eileen married Raymond Wingfield and lived for a while at Mt Margaret station before going to Iron Knob, near Port Augusta. Here 'he, the husband, was working all the time, and that's when they took our kids. [They] just used to rush in and grab kids. I argued to see them. But it broke our hearts'.
While they were living in Port Augusta, Eileen began making jewellery, and also took up painting. In the 1980s they joined the Kokatha People's Committee and joined the 1983 blockade at Cane Grass Swamp, Roxby Downs, when the Western Mining operations bulldozed an important site. They later lived at Coober Pedy, where Eileen joined the Women's Group 'and never looked back'. She wrote her story for her nine children, twenty-two grandchildren and her great-grand-children.
