Eileen Kampakuta Brown grew up around Alpanyinta (Sailors Well), South Australia. Brown was a teenager when she was taken from Alpanyinta to work at Wellbourne Hill Station to shepherd sheep. Her mother worked inside the station doing housework. When Brown's mother left Wellbourne Hilll Station, Brown was made to do all the housework. The work load - making beds, washing and ironing clothes, scrubbing and shining floors, and cleaning the kitchen every day - was excessive so Brown left to join her mother.
Brown walked nearly 50 kilometres to find her family tending sheep at Winatinna Station, east of Marla Bore, South Australia. Once reunited with her family, she spent time walking between Winatinna Station, Mount Willoughby Station and Sailors Well for work. Eventually Brown was taken to work at Ackaringa then Evelyn Downs.
Later in life Brown became the pre-eminent cultural woman for the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta (Senior Aboriginal Women's Council of Cooper Pedy). The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta formed the anti-radioactive campaign 'Irati wanti, the poison - leave it!', a protest against the Federal Government's dumping of nuclear waste in the central desert.
(Main source: Brown, E. K., An Anangu - Aboriginal Lover Story : My Young Life, Nyiri Publications, 2003)
