Peaceful and kind with a deep undercurrent of power and knowledge.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
That's how those closest to Yalmay Yunupingu describe the senior Yolngu leader and retiring teacher linguist at the Yirrkala Bilingual School.
For around 40 years, Ms Yunupingu has been working as a bilingual educator in north-east Arnhem Land.
"I would say that she's the mother of the school," the school's co-principal Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs said.
"She's gentle and just beautiful and so loving, and she's got the toughness within her as well."
Family, friends, colleagues and her community recently came together in the remote community of Yirrkala to celebrate her contribution.
"I'm really sad to leave education because education means the world to me," Ms Yunupingu said.
"I think about the Yolngu children.
"We don't want to lose our culture, lose our language. It's very much in us, it lives in us."
Always attracted to books, Ms Yunupingu recalls beginning her career as a young woman working in the community's library.
"This is where my heart was when I left school, I wanted to be a teacher librarian," she said.
"I started translating some books at the time and they were Dr Suess books."
She later worked at the Yirrkala school alongside her husband, the late Yothu Yindi lead singer and educator Dr M Yunupingu.
"Together they are, I would say, they are like a powerhouse," Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs said.
"They're the ones that paved the way for the young ones to come up and be confident in themselves.
"To speak out, to be able to say, 'hey, I have values too that I bring with me into the school'."
A 'bilingual warrior'
Ms Yunupingu became a fierce advocate for bilingual learning, where children are taught their own language, Yolngu Matha, alongside English.
Described by colleagues during her retirement ceremony as a "bilingual warrior", Ms Yunupingu has refused to let government policies of the day dismantle their hard work.
The Yirrkala school spoke up against a Labor policy in 2009 that directed all NT schools to teach their classes in English-only for the first four hours.
"We simply said no," Ms Yunupingu said.
"Because with the curriculum we had, we did a garma curriculum — garma is a Yolngu philosophy, teaching Yolngu knowledge at the school."
The Yirrkala school also refused to adopt direct instruction, a scripted form of teaching promoted by Noel Pearson and the previous Country Liberal Party government.
And it's not just generations of children who have learnt from Ms Yunupingu.
"I've learnt how to come out of my shell, how to be stronger than I think," Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs said.
"Having six children during that time, six girls, and looking after them and looking after her husband and looking after herself — she's amazing, she's a superwoman."
For Ms Yunupingu, now is the right time to step back after the recent passing of several family members, including a daughter and beloved sister.
"I now feel empty because my family's all going and sometimes it's very hard for me when I'm working and attending funerals," she said.
Ms Yunupingu said she also wanted to spend more time passing knowledge on to her grandchildren, and pursing her sister Dr B Marika's dream of setting up a healing centre in her community.
"I want to continue my sister's legacy, doing healing, using bush medicine, native medicine," she said.
"We have bush medicine for stress, there's a lot of other bush medicine that we can use to heal, from babies to adults."
Ms Yunupingu said she was particularly proud the Yirrkala school's classrooms now have an app that she helped develop over five years with the University of Melbourne and others.
"It's on phonological awareness, a skill that we want kids to use," she said.
More support needed to train local teachers
As the last two fully-qualified Yolngu teachers at the Yirrkala school, Ms Yunupingu and Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs both want more community-based support for a new generation of local teachers.
"Yes, it's a worry," Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs said. "There is a big gap between me as the last qualified teacher here in the school at this moment."
"Besides Yalmay, there is no-one — no-one coming through as yet, but we are trying our best to train them to be teachers.
"For a Yolngu person to study to become a qualified teacher, it's very difficult because of the other obligations that we go through."
Ms Yunupingu and Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs both studied through the Northern Territory's Remote Aboriginal Teacher Education (RATE) program, which began community-based courses in Yirrkala in the 1970s.
While a revised RATE program has been re-instated, Ms Yunupingu said it was difficult for community members to complete any required travel to Darwin.
"It would be good to get the RATE up and running here. That's what we want to see in the future," she said.
Yirrkala school to continue 'both ways' teaching
According to the NT Education Department, there are nine remaining bilingual schools across the Territory.
Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs said despite ongoing debate about bilingual education, the Yirrkala school would keep working towards fulfilling the vision of elders to teach children "both ways".
"In the meantime, we just work hard and make things change, to make a difference, to make it work, what the elders have visualised," she said.
Although Ms Yunupingu has retired from teaching, she was recently voted in as the Yirrkala school council's chairperson.
"She'll leave us with the knowledge that she gave us and we will keep on doing what she started," Ms Ganambarr-Stubbs said.
"What the elders started, it'll keep going on, it'll never be finished, unless there's no-one who has gone through study to become a qualified teacher."
