Tjungurrayi was born in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory, 200 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, in the region surrounding Coniston Station around 1895. His first name, "Gwoja", means water. His last name reflects his skin name that was Tjungurrayi. As pastoralism expanded in the region during the early 1900s, encroaching further into Tjungurrayi's ancestral country, tensions intensified during the drought of the 1920s, with increasing competition over water and food. He survived the Coniston Massacre in the then Territory of Central Australia in 1928, although accounts of his survival differ: