Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers

In the Flinders Ranges, A Kuyanic man presents a cake of ochre to a European doctor, in earnest proof that the threatened ochre mine is 'as important as the Bible is to Christians'. As netted bags are exchanged for cloth south of Port Darwin, a surveyor's linguistic hobby draws him close to Djerimanga people, near enough to become the unwitting victim of a blood debt.OCHRE AND RUST takes Aboriginal artifacts from their museum shelves, and traces their biographies, revealing charged and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia's frontier history.