Bugai was born at Pukayiyirna, on present day Balfour Downs Station, though her parents soon travelled northward with her through Jigalong and Nullagine toward Kunawarritji. She grew up, walked and hunted primarily around Punmu, Kunawarritji and Kun Kun, and as a young woman travelled up and down large tracts of the 1850km long Canning Stock Route, where she and her husband met and walked with cattle drovers. In 1963 Bugai’s family met the surveyor Len Beadell, who was then grading roads for the Woomera Missile Testing Range. He gave the family flour, which Bugai was able to use to show her relaitives how to cook a simple damper (flat bread). Bugai had herself been taught how to bake with flour during her earlier interacions with drovers in her travels on the Stock Route. Bugai continued to live semi-nomadically with her family and later with her husband before eventually deciding to move to Jigalong Mission, joining many other relatives that had already travelled in from the desert following a prolonged and severe drought. In more recent years she has lived in Kunawarritji community, where she was taught to paint by relatives Nora Nungabar and Nora Wompi. The three women painted together as often as possible. For a long time, Bugai wove baskets, watching the other women painting. Later, she explained that she had been uncertain how to begin. Today Bugai is considered one of most established Martumili Artists, and is known as a master of colour, gesture and subtlety. Bugai's sister Nancy Patterson (dec.) was an equally renowned Martumili artist.