All language subtitles for BBC Oceans Apart Art and the Pacific 1 of 3 Australia.1080p

The Pacific Ocean is the world's
biggest feature.

Covering over 60 million square
miles,

it dominates a third of our planet's
surface,

and is larger than all seven
continents combined.

250 years ago,

Captain Cook began voyaging across

this great ocean and set foot in
places

that few Europeans have seen before,

including Australia,

New Zealand and the great Polynesian
islands of Tahiti and Hawaii.

But he also made contact with
people.

Entire societies long hidden from
the rest of the world.

It was the beginning of an historic
encounter between Oceania and the

West, between the indigenous people

and those who went on to colonise
them.

In this series,

I'll explore the momentous impact of
that and later encounters.

How they disrupted and destroyed
many indigenous communities,

but opened our eyes to a new world
of images,

reinvigorated Western art,

and irrevocably changed the global
imagination.

This isn't a simple story.

It's a complicated story, and not
always a happy one,

because contact and conflict,

exploration and exploitation so
often go hand in hand.

But one thing I think is certain -

these encounters were dynamite and
they detonated a cultural explosion

that is still resonating today.

And I won't be telling this story
alone.

In these programmes,

indigenous people from all over
Oceania will have their say,

describing their art, and reflecting

on the often painful legacy of
encounter.

My people, we've sat and
we've watched this for 250 years.

This episode tells the story of an
indigenous people who were almost

destroyed by the devastating impact
of colonisation,

but whose extraordinary creativity
endured,

flourished, and is today famous
around the world.

I'm beginning not with Cook's first
discovery, but his largest,

the great island continent of
Australia.

Our story begins with a discovery,

long before the time of
Captain Cook.

About 65,000 years ago,

a small group of mariners sailed

from Southeast Asia to an island
called Sahul.

They populated its vast northern
landscapes,

living off the region's fauna and
flora.

Over time, these aboriginal people

developed a culture unlike any
other.

These societies were unusually
dependent on what we call art.

They didn't have a written language,

so they filled their images with
meaning, using them to communicate,

to tell stories and to preserve
invaluable, indeed, often sacred,

information. And this they kept
doing,

generation after generation,
millennium after millennium.

And in doing so,

they created the oldest continuous

artistic tradition anywhere in the
world.

Many of their artworks were
ephemeral.

They were drawn into the earth or

painted onto bodies and vanished
soon

after they were made.

But some of them still survive.

This is Injalak Hill, in Arnhem
Land, northern Australia.

Indigenous people have lived here
for tens of thousands of years,

sheltering in its sandstone
structures.

Over the millennia, they have done
something remarkable here.

Amid the crevices and boulders,
there are innumerable paintings.

Humans and animals stalk these
ancient stone surfaces.

Some dating back 10,000 years,
others painted only decades ago.

But the most breathtaking sight at
Injalak is this one.

Wow!

An enormous rock overhang, covered
in paintings.

Perhaps more than 1,000 of them, one
on top of the other.

A palimpsest, painted through the
generations.

This is the main gallery at Injalak

and it is so full of images that
it's

quite difficult to decipher what's
going on,

but it's clear that we are looking
at a menagerie of local animals.

So what do we have? Well, up here,
there is a long-necked turtle.

Over there is a giant rock python -
two, three,

perhaps even four metres long, that
runs along the surface of stone.

There is a kangaroo, or a wallaby.

Over here, we have a black echidna,
or porcupine.

And up here,

we have these cockatoo feathers that
are waving out at us like hands.

But the most obvious figures in this
painting are of course the fish,

and there are dozens of them.

These barramundi started being
painted here 8,000 years ago,

and in a uniquely perceptive way.

The artists have even shown their
internal organs

in a manner known as the x-ray
style.

As I continue my journey through the
rocks, I find yet more paintings.

Spirit figures stare out at me from
every corner.

This is a vast, labyrinthine art

gallery like nothing I've seen
before.

I have been to many art sites in my
time, but none of them,

none of them has affected me quite
like this one.

It's not simply the quality of the
art - which is breathtaking,

of course - it is the continuity of
the art.

Paintings were being made here at
Injalak Hill before the pyramids,

before Stonehenge,

and they are still being made in the
same ways in our own time,

and there is nothing like that
continuity in Europe.

Imagine if you had a single piece of
paper and you gave that piece of

paper to a Palaeolithic cave painter
and they made, I don't know,

a hand stencil on it.

And they then handed it to an
Ancient Greek artist,

who drew an Aphrodite.

And that artist handed it to
Michelangelo,

who drew a Madonna and Child.

And Michelangelo then handed it to
Rembrandt,

and Rembrandt to Cezanne,

and Cezanne to Picasso.

All of them adding to the same piece
of paper,

contributing to the same work of
art.

A work of art that spanned an entire
civilisation.

We would find it completely
astonishing.

And yet that is what we have here.

But aboriginal Australians would
soon be interrupted.

Hidden away on one rock face is a

spine-chilling painting of visitors
from

a far-away world.

At 6:00am on April 20th, 1770,

a British ship called the Endeavour
first reached Australia...

..and set in motion a seminal
cultural collision.

The ship was commanded by James Cook
and carried a team of scientists and

artists led by the gentleman
botanist Joseph Banks.

Over the course of their long
voyage, they had achieved much.

They had crossed the South Pacific,

and conducted astronomical
experiments

in Tahiti. They had charted the

entire coastline of New Zealand and
made

first contact with the Maori.

But now, two years into their
expedition,

they were hunting for something
bigger.

When many people of Cook's era
thought about the world,

they felt there was something
missing.

The northern hemisphere was full of
land and the southern hemisphere was

full of water - and this, they
reasoned, made the Earth top-heavy.

Now, they were certain it all had to
even out,

so they became convinced that there

was a great landmass in the south
that

they simply hadn't discovered yet.

A southern continent that they
called Terra Australis.

And that, by this stage in the
mission,

is what Cook was trying to find.

And on that momentous day in April
1770,

he thought he might have found it.

When Cook and his crew disembarked,

they became the first Europeans to
set foot on this land,

what is now the south-east coast of
Australia.

It was unlike anywhere they had been
before.

It's really hard to imagine how Cook

and his crew must have felt when
they

first walked along this vast and
beautiful coastline.

To us, Australia is a long way away
but, to them,

this was land that no European even
knew existed before.

This was another planet.

In many respects, this was the
18th-century equivalent

of the moon landing.

And it was filled with things that
seemed to belong to another world.

Joseph Banks and his fellow botanist
Daniel Solander had been sent by the

Royal Society in London to learn as
much as they could about these new

lands, and they lost no time in
setting to work.

Between them, they found 1,000 new
species of plants in just 70 days,

and so named the area Botanists, or
Botany Bay.

As they made their way up the coast,

they also discovered exotic animals,
and one perplexed them more than any

other.

"It was of a mouse colour, very
slender-made and swift of foot.

"I should have taken it for a wild
dog, but for its walking or running,

"in which it leapt like a hare or
deer.

"The full size of a greyhound and
shaped in every respect like one."

Joseph Banks was so captivated by
this bouncing greyhound that he

commissioned the famed equestrian
painter George Stubbs to paint it.

Stubbs called it The Kongouro.

This is the first painting of a

kangaroo in the history of Western
art.

Stubbs had never seen one alive, of
course,

but he was able to base this image

on sketches that had come back from
the

Endeavour, on verbal descriptions,
and perhaps most helpfully,

on a kangaroo skin owned by Joseph
Banks that Stubbs had inflated like

a balloon in his studio.

And I must say, he's done a pretty
good job.

Despite a handful of anatomical
inaccuracies here and there,

it, on the whole, is extremely
convincing.

And what's more, Stubbs has gone to

great lengths to place this
Australian

creature in an Australian landscape.

We've got these scrubby eucalypt
trees

and this distinctive pinkish
light.

Now, Stubbs first exhibited this

painting together with a picture of
a dingo in London in 1773,

and its impact on the British public
was formidable.

Some people stood aghast in front of
it.

Others broke into heated debate.

And some people thought it was a

practical joke and burst into
laughter.

But nothing better captured the
wonders of the new, new world.

This painting was seen as proof that
Cook's voyages were rewriting the

very laws of nature.

Of course, indigenous Australians
had been painting such creatures for

millennia, and in a distinctive
style that is still practised today.

My ancestors have been painting bark
for a long, long time.

The red ochre is for painting
background on bark.

My mother's brother taught me how to
paint.

You have to do a lot of practice, by
watching the elders painting.

My inspiration came from the elders
from the

Bingara rock art, and that's how

they've shared the stories.

Then we get the grass brush.

Then we would do the outline.

I collect grass along the billabong
edge of creek beds.

I cut them and use them

to do the lines I'm painting.

Kangaroo, it's...

..a food source for us.

We kill, we cook and eat.

The cross etching represent
the flesh,

or the meat, inside the animal.

That's how we want to teach our kids
to see

what the animal

has inside his body.

That's how we paint x-ray styles.

Yes, I am happy. I'm proud that I am

part of the tradition.

I wonder what George Stubbs would
have made of this.

His beloved kongouro, as

painted by someone who knew it,
inside out.

But these two very different

cultures would soon come to know
each other.

Before landing at Botany Bay,

the Endeavour observed indigenous
Australians along the coast.

The Polynesian navigator Tupaia,

who'd been with Cook's crew since
Tahiti,

depicted some men fishing for food
in the ocean,

and in doing so

became the first outsider to
represent aboriginal people.

Contact, however, proved difficult.

The inhabitants of this great

southern territory resisted all
attempts at

communication. It's clear that

indigenous Australians wanted
nothing to do

with these white-faced,
heavily-clothed invaders.

But Cook, who had been observing
them carefully over the period -

often through a telescope, because
he couldn't get any closer -

was actually quite impressed by the
people he encountered here,

and this is what he wrote in his
journal in August, 1770.

"They may appear to some to be the
most wretched people on Earth, but

"in reality they are far more happy
than we Europeans.

"They live in a tranquillity which

"is not disturbed by the inequality
of condition."

And yet there is a bitter irony in
that passage,

because that tranquillity, that very
happiness,

would be thoroughly disturbed - and,
in part,

due to the actions of Cook himself.

Because at the very same time,

and without bothering to gain the
consent

of people who had been living here
for thousands of years,

he declared all of eastern Australia
to be British territory.

His decision would have momentous
consequences.

18 years later, the British returned
to claim their prize,

In January 1788,

11 British ships carrying more than
1,000 people anchored at Botany Bay,

The new arrivals, however, weren't
so impressed,

so they travelled a few miles north,

where they found an unusually safe
and deep harbour.

They then established a settlement
there,

which they named after the then Home
Secretary, Sydney.

New South Wales was to be Britain's
latest penal colony,

and 700 of its first residents were
convicts, some of whom were artists.

One of these was Thomas Watling.

This is his depiction of Sydney
Harbour in 1794,

painted just six years after the
arrival of the first fleet.

But perhaps the most interesting of

these convict artists was Thomas
Bock.

Bock had been born in Birmingham in
1793, and by his 20s

had established himself as a
successful local engraver,

with a wife and five children.

But then he committed his crime.

In his early thirties,

Bock became infatuated with a
17-year-old woman and persuaded her,

against her parents' wishes,
to leave home.

He placed her in some lonely
lodgings

and paid regular secret visits.

When, inevitably, she became
pregnant,

he was so determined to cover his
tracks that he forced her to drink

poison, in the hope that he could
bring about a miscarriage.

She survived, thankfully, and so did
the baby.

And in 1823, Bock was sentenced to
14 years in Australia.

Bock arrived at the penal colony
here in Tasmania -

then called Van Diemen's Land - the
following January.

But he soon established himself as a
sought-after local artist,

who even plied his trade in the
morgue.

This is his portrait of Alexander
Pearce,

just hanged for murder and
cannibalism.

In the 1830s,

Bock also painted a series of
portraits of indigenous Tasmanians.

It's hard to believe that at the
very same time,

their community was being displaced
by Bock's ruthless countrymen.

In my view, Bock's most bewitching
aboriginal portrait is this one.

This is Mathinna.

She's only about seven years old,

but she's already lived a life of
some upheaval.

Her father was a local Chief,

but the British tracked him down and
took her away from her parents and

placed her in an orphanage.

She was then offered as a kind of

exotic gift to the Governor of
Tasmania

and his wife, who adopted her.

And she lived, it must be said, in
some style, in Government House,

as a kind of trophy black princess.

And it was they who commissioned
Thomas Bock to make this portrait.

Mathinna is shown in this elegant,
almost English, pose,

her hands clasped neatly at her
knees, her legs crossed.

And she is wearing this
extraordinary flaming scarlet dress.

But in a nod to her aboriginal
origins,

Bock has shown her not wearing
shoes.

Mathinna has these incredible, deep,
dark,

bright eyes that stare back at us
with intelligence and confidence.

But as you look at this picture
longer,

as you look at her for longer,

you begin, I think, to detect a

sense of profound loneliness and
sadness.

And why wouldn't she be?

Do you know what I find so
extraordinary about this image?

Thomas Bock was essentially a
convicted criminal and yet, here,

he has produced this incredibly
tender,

incredibly sensitive portrait of a
girl who he was told belonged to an

inferior race.

And I wonder, I just wonder whether
sitter and artist kind of understood

each other. Because after all, both
of them were exiles in Tasmania.

Both of them had been torn away from
their families.

When the Governor and his wife
returned to Britain,

Mathinna was abandoned.

She took to drink, and at the age
of 17,

she drunkenly drowned in a puddle.

Her needless death seems to

encapsulate the fate of many
indigenous

Australians, whose lives were turned
upside down by colonisation.

But for the colonisers, the future
was bright.

In the following decades, the fabric
of Australia was transformed.

White settlers began to arrive in
the country in increasingly large

numbers, turning vast swathes of
land into highly profitable farms.

By the end of the 19th century,

there were more than three million
settlers in Australia,

and they came to see this place not
as a colony, but a country.

Not as a prison, but a paradise.

To them, this was a land of
opportunity.

It was a sunny, spacious antidote to
Europe,

where the class system was less

rigid and where profits and fortunes
were

there to be made.

This national identity was soon
expressed in art.

And one painting in particular

captured the new Australian
optimism.

Arthur Streeton's Golden Summer,
Eaglemont.

This is Australia's Hay Wain,

its most famous image,

a painting that, for many people,

encapsulates the very idea of
Australia.

A picture reproduced on countless
postcards,

chocolate boxes and postage stamps.

And it's easy to see why it was,
and is, so popular.

When you look at it, you can almost
feel the wind in your hair.

You can almost feel the sun on your
face.

And it is painted with such
wonderful looseness of touch.

I love these wispy clouds over here.

I love this half-visible moon that's
twinkling in the sky.

Now, the painting is built almost

entirely of prismatic hues of
yellows,

of violets, of blues that Streeton
had borrowed from the French

Impressionists, but that

nevertheless capture a light that is
singularly

and peculiarly Australian.

Now, this painting was conceived in
1888, 1889,

only 100 years after the first fleet
landed in Australia and established

the colony of New South Wales.

But you wouldn't know it because

this painting makes it seem like
they

have been here forever.

The landscape has been tamed.

The new world looks like the old
world.

And the Australian wilderness has

been converted into a patchwork
quilt of

fields that are filled with farmers
and sheep and farmhouses.

But Streeton's paradise had come at
a cost.

Aboriginal Australians had been
moved off this land.

They had been devastated by diseases

against which they had no
protection,

and massacred with impunity.

By the time this painting was made,

the aboriginal population had
plummeted from over 300,000

to around 80,000.

And all the while,

British attitudes towards indigenous
people were hardening.

And they were captured in the new
medium of photography.

This photograph was taken in New
South Wales.

It shows two aboriginal people - a
man here and a woman here -

out in the bush.

One of them is holding a spear, the
other a boomerang.

He's wearing traditional clothes.

He's wearing an apron made from a

wallaby skin and a headband made
from a

dingo tail. And there is, of course,
a dead kangaroo by their feet.

And yet this is, in reality, a
complete fiction.

They're not out in the bush, but in
a photographic studio.

And these aren't their possessions,

but props that have been given to
them by their photographer.

This photograph wasn't taken for
them and it wasn't given to them.

This photograph was given, or sold,
by one white person to another.

And so when we look at this
photograph,

what we're really looking at is a
group of people whose land has been

taken, whose traditions have been
almost entirely wiped out,

being forced into fancy dress in

order to entertain the very people
who

have displaced them.

More concerning images are found
elsewhere.

Made not for entertainment, but for
scientific research,

in a quest for proof that aboriginal
Australians

belonged to an inferior race.

These photographs were taken by a
man called Paul Foelsche,

who founded the Northern Territory
Police Force in the late 1860s,

early 1870s.

Now, he was, it must be said, a
divisive figure.

Some people think he was an able and
efficient and intelligent policeman,

others think he was responsible for
dozens of massacres of aboriginal

people over the decades.

Either way, when he wasn't policing
northern Australia,

he was an enthusiastic

anthropologist and amateur
photographer.

And in the course of this research,

he took hundreds of images of
indigenous people.

This image, I think, is particularly
distressing because here

a powerless young woman has been

forced to stand naked in an
unfamiliar

room, in front of a strange white
man with a camera.

And in many respects, the most

alarming thing in this photograph is
this,

the measuring stick,

because she and many other people
like her were being measured so they

could be compared to other races.

The British used this perceived

biological inferiority as a
justification

for colonisation.

These prejudices cast a long shadow
over Australia's history that

stretches right up to the present.

Today, aboriginal people are still
victims of this old intolerance.

My father is a Western Islander
tribe.

My mother was from Luritja Pintupi
tribe from the west.

I heard a story my mum told me about
my grandfather.

He was taken in chains to Adelong.

They had a police station there a
long time ago.

Of course, that place was strange to
him,

the jail. He just killed himself.

That's the story I heard from my
mother.

Australian government
made too many rules,

giving our land away.

Stories, dreaming.

I don't know if they did apologise,
I don't know,

but we are still fighting for our
rights and freedom,

and that makes me sad

and angry, because we are the first
people here in Australia.

It's really sad, you know?

We should be working together as
Australians,

teaching our children black or
white, whatever colour we are.

Even in this world.

Especially Australia.

By 1900,

aboriginal people had been written
out of the story of modern Australia

and certainly out of its art.

But in the 20th century, that would
begin to change,

and it would come from an unlikely
place.

This is Australia's Western Desert -
a vast,

arid landscape in the country's
interior, isolated and inhospitable.

Deserts aren't typically places

where much grows, and yet it was
here,

in this hot, dry and largely barren
landscape that the seeds of an

aboriginal revival were sown.

An artistic revival that would first
be recognised here in Australia and

later all over the world.

The revival began in Hermannsburg,

a small aboriginal settlement 80
miles from Alice Springs.

At its centre is a Lutheran Mission
which, since 1877,

offered indigenous people
accommodation,

education and some protection from
white settlers

in return for conversion.

Over the years, many boys and girls
grew up in these peaceful

surroundings, but one stood out from
all others.

His name was Elea.

Elea had been born in July 1902 and
had grown into a studious young man

who excelled at everything he did.

He had worked as a carpenter, a
blacksmith,

a stock hand and a camel driver,

but his aspirations changed

dramatically when he was 32 years
old.

In 1934, two artists - two white
artists -

came here to Hermannsburg to mount
an exhibition.

Now, Elea had never seen such things
as paintings before and he was

instantly transfixed, so he begged
his pastor...

begged his pastor for a small box of
watercolours.

The pastor agreed, and when they
finally arrived,

Elea set to work teaching himself
how to paint.

Two years later, one of the artists,
Rex Battarbee,

returned to Hermannsburg for a
painting trip.

Elea became his guide and the two
began painting alongside each other.

Elea quickly mastered his craft and
began signing

his pictures Albert Namatjira.

Soon, Namatjira's work was being

shown in Australia's cities and the
white public was captivated.

Some are now in the National Gallery
of Australia, in Canberra.

This is one of Albert Namatjira's
early works, dating to 1939.

He'd only properly been painting for
about three years when he made it.

And I like to think of it as a kind
of action painting.

It's a freeze-frame.

On the left, there is a kangaroo -

a rather more convincing kangaroo

than the one managed by George
Stubbs -

and on the right is a hunter.

And this hunter is moving so
stealthily

that it's almost as if he's snuck

into the painting without Namatjira
noticing.

He's right at the edge.

And he's about to release this long
spear.

Now, what's going to happen next?

Is he going to hit the kangaroo?

Is he going to miss it?

Is the kangaroo going to escape?

Obviously, we don't know.

But what we do know is this
beautiful,

tranquil landscape is about to be
disturbed

and these birds are about to vanish.

This is Mount Hermannsburg,

the great guardian mountain that
towers over the village in which

Namatjira had been born.

So in some ways, it's a celebration
of home.

But above all, it's a study in light
and colour.

Namatjira has tried to capture the
way that the soft, low,

milky light of morning or late
afternoon has transfigured this arid

landscape into a kaleidoscope of
hues.

The mountain becomes a kind of
irresistible, almost abstract,

pattern of teals and turquoises,
greens and purples.

It is a tour de force.

And it's the confidence that is most
impressive here.

Anyone who's ever worked in
watercolour

will know that as soon as you

hesitate, everything is over.

Well, Namatjira hasn't hesitated
once.

Every stroke, every mark is deployed
with certainty and precision.

One of Namatjira's favourite
subjects

was the ghost gum tree - a eucalypt,

native to central Australia.

To indigenous people, ghost gums

were important markers in the
desert.

They only sprung up where there was
ground water, and so they indicated

sources of life.

Their white bark shone in the
moonlight,

so offered guidance after dark.

These trees were also believed to
embody the spirits of the dead,

hence the name ghost gum,

and that might explain why Namatjira
has depicted this tree almost as

though it's a human.

The branches are like limbs, the
bark wrinkles like skin.

And if you squint your eyes, the
patterns on the trunk become eyes,

noses and mouths.

I wonder whether these trees, which
Namatjira painted repeatedly,

are perhaps self-portraits.

Portraits of Namatjira himself,

a symbol of life and creativity in
the desert.

Today, Namatjira's paintings divide
opinion.

Some think they are sad symbols of
aboriginal assimilation.

But for others, they are powerful
hybrid artworks.

A Western-style vision of Australia

that no Westerner could have
produced.

What's certain is they made him
famous.

In 1954, he met the Queen.

And in 1957, as amazing as it seems,

he became the first aboriginal
person to be granted full Australian

But it was this that led to his
downfall.

As a full citizen, Namatjira was

entitled to purchase and consume
alcohol,

unlike any other indigenous
Australian.

So naturally, he shared it with his
family,

his friends and other members of his
community.

And that is why, in 1958,

he was charged with supplying

alcohol to indigenous Australians
and

sentenced to three months of hard
labour in the outback.

In many respects, he never
recovered.

He returned from his sentence weak
and haggard.

Within a few months, he was dead,
aged 57.

And yet, Namatjira left a legacy.

Throughout his life, he encouraged

his family and friends to also take
up

painting, and they are still doing
so today.

These are Albert Namatjira's
grandchildren.

I've accompanied them on one of

their regular watercolour trips near
Alice Springs.

These are the gum trees?

Yeah. Red wood.

So, Mervyn, what do you think of
Albert Namatjira and his paintings?

He's good. The first native

Australian ever done real good
painting.

I don't know how he done all this.

It's real nice.

Why do you think he was so good?

Was it talent? Yeah, it was talent
because he had it all in his mind,

when he was looking at the country,

the landscape, the colour of the
land.

So, Gloria, what are you painting
today?

I'm painting
Mount Hermannsburg.

So, did you have any lessons, or did
you...

No. You taught yourself?

Yep. I began painting when I was 12.

You began when you were 12? Yeah.

I was just sitting around with my
uncles and my dad,

who was all painters,

and just by watching them...

..got me inspired.

Right. And then that's how I learnt
to paint.

Without Albert Namatjira, if there
was no Albert Namatjira,

would you be painting now?

No.

There'd be no artists.

He started a great tradition.

Yeah.

That he passed on to the next
generation, to the next.

Like Albert before them,

Namatjira's descendants seem to have
a rare ability to capture the vivid

colours of the Australian desert,

and I have seen first-hand how
important art has become to them.

And yet, for all their creativity,

the Namatjira family have always
worked in the Western style.

But other aboriginal artists have
done something completely different.

In February 1971,

a van filled with belongings hurtled
west into the Australian desert.

It was carrying a Sydney
schoolteacher

called Geoff Bardon, and he was

heading to his latest posting.

It was going to be a challenging
job.

Barden had been appointed as an art
teacher at a primary school in a

remote aboriginal settlement called
Papunya,

which was six hours' drive from
Alice Springs,

which itself was about a week's
drive from Sydney.

Papunya was a home for exiles.

More than a thousand indigenous
Australians living impoverished and

dislocated lives in the desert.

Their traditions being eradicated by
the authorities.

But a powerful creative impulse
remained.

Bardon noticed the children making
beautiful drawings in the sand.

Near-abstract patterns of lines,

dots and spirals that clearly had
great significance to the indigenous

community. And he encouraged them to
start painting and drawing these

images onto paper.

But he didn't confine his efforts to
the children.

He persuaded their parents and
grandparents to do the same.

And by the middle of 1971,

he had persuaded a large group of
men

to paint a mural on the school wall.

The piece became known as Honey Ant
Dreaming -

a ten-metre-wide masterpiece that

became a source of intense pride in
the

community. The mural opened the
floodgates.

Gardeners, dustmen,

kangaroo hunters and pensioners
started visiting Bardon's classroom.

With paint and brushes provided by
the school,

they painted on anything they could
find.

Broken tables, floor tiles.

These amateur artists, who had never
worked with such materials before,

possessed almost limitless
creativity.

Working not in the Western style,
but with indigenous motifs,

they produced one extraordinary
image after another.

All of these pictures were inspired
by the vast landscape of the Western

Desert, but they didn't paint it
like Namatjira.

They showed it from above.

In stylised, abstract motifs,
representing rivers,

sandhills and sacred sites.

The journeys across them,

the rituals that took place in them,
and the stories that unfolded there.

One of these artists was a cattle
rancher and stockman,

who went on to become one of
Bardon's most prolific proteges.

His name was Mick Namarari
Tjapaltjarri and, for him,

the desert had long been associated
with tragedy.

One day, when Mick was seven or

eight years old, his father went
missing.

The following morning,

his increasingly concerned family
followed his tracks into the desert.

And after a short while, they found
his body,

with a spear through its back,
murdered by a revenge party.

Everyone burst into tears and Mick's
grandmother was so distraught that

she built a fire and threw herself
into it.

Mick tried to pull her out,
but it was too late.

The incident would have destroyed
many people,

but it spurred Mick to ever greater
creativity.

This, in my view, is Mick Namarari's
masterpiece.

It is called Sunrise Chasing Away
The Night,

and it was painted in the late
1970s.

Like so many Papunya landscapes,

it shows the Western Desert from a
bird's eye view.

We are, in fact, not looking from
the sky,

but from space, from heaven.

These extraordinary white circles
are stars,

so we are looking through the stars,

down onto the Australian landscape
below.

And you can see the yellows, the
ochres, the greys,

the oranges of the soil,

with these dots representing the
rocks and pebbles that scatter its

surface.

There are paths across this
landscape,

the tracks of the people that
inhabit it.

And at its centre is this
extraordinary concentric circle,

which marks a sacred site, a
ceremonial site,

at which a campfire might well have
been burning throughout the night.

But now it is morning,

and Namarari has depicted a sunrise
like none I've seen before,

a sunrise from above.

On the right, in the east,

the sun is just beginning to creep
up over the horizon and is spreading

its white light west across the
desert.

And as it does so, the dark shadow
of the night -

which is represented with this

extraordinarily rich black acrylic
paint -

is being pushed out of the picture.

What a painting this is!

And you know, Mick Namarari has
never been taught how to paint,

he'd never been to an art gallery,

he'd never been on a plane and

looked down on the ground beneath
him,

and so all of this had to come from
within.

All of it had to come from his
imagination.

This is hybrid art at its best.

A glorious combination of Western

materials and an indigenous
imagination.

It's not surprising, then,

that dot paintings are now among
Australia's most prized artworks.

Aboriginal art is big business,

with some dot paintings commanding
astronomical sums.

The National Gallery in Canberra is
the new owner of a painting by

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, which

sold for 2.4 million
dollars overnight,

a world-record price for aboriginal
art.

Jamie Wilczek reports.

To what extent these vast amounts

benefit the wider aboriginal
community

is a subject of debate,

but these paintings are now
recognised as some of

Australia's finest cultural
achievements

and that in itself is something

to be celebrated.

Aboriginal people have been victims
of centuries of injustice and they

remain marginalised politically,

socially and economically, but not
artistically.

Aboriginal art galleries and art
centres

are now all across the country,

and for many indigenous people art
has become an escape from misery

and from poverty, and it's also
enabled them

to make their mark on modern
Australia.

Indeed, over the last few decades,

aboriginal motifs have come to
symbolise

Australia itself.

Throughout the world, aboriginal dot
painting is instantly recognisable

and even adorns Australia's national
airline.

Indigenous creativity has fuelled
the global imagination

and has entered
the canon of modern art.

And now a new generation of

indigenous artists are
reinvigorating

traditional techniques

and bringing their art to
international audiences.

My name's Dale Harding.

I'm a contemporary artist currently
based in Brisbane.

And in my matrilineal line I inherit
responsibility,

language and territories for the
Bidjara people, the Ghungalu people,

Garingbal people and also Nguri
people of Central Queensland.

Reckitt's Blue is what's described
as an optical whitener.

It's a laundry product, manufactured
from synthetic ultramarine pigment,

and washing soda, and two
generations of my mum's family

were indentured domestic servants,

forced to work under the labour of
the Department of Native Affairs,

and the Queensland
government in Australia,

and Reckitt's Blue was a pigment

that was used in the laundry by
domestic

servants and indentured house
workers

to clean and to whiten and to

brighten the bed linen and the
clothes of their employers and their

colonial masters,

so throughout Bidjara, Ghungalu,
Garingbal and Nguri territories

in central Queensland,

rock art features prominently.

Negative and positive stencil works
where an item, an object, a hand,

something of significance was placed
against the surface,

and a negative or positive stencil
was made.

There's at least 19,500 years of
continual cultural expression on

Bidjara sites which I inherit
through my grandfather's line.

What I do in a gallery context is
different.

It's a different thing altogether.

It's contemporary art, but using and
employing and remembering and

continuing to hold the continuum of
our rock art practice

enables the possibility that younger

generations coming forward will know
this is normal and their

bodies will remember what to do.

Rock art sites across the Australian
continent, but particularly

I can speak for, in central
Queensland,

are vulnerable to all sorts of

exposures - exposures to literally
the weather and time,

exposure to not being in contact
with their countrymen.

Sites are to be cared for and are to
be

cherished and celebrated, but if we
think of cultural continuum,

there would be new forms coming,
they would be new expressions,

there would be new representations
and there would be futures at sites.

The death drive of care,

the death drive of trying to
preserve something

that is seen as static and finished
discounts me, discounts my body,

discounts my family and discounts
aboriginal people across the entire

Australian continent.

On the 26th of January, 1988,

Australia celebrated its
bicentenary.

It was 200 years since the first
fleet had settled these shores.

But many indigenous Australians saw
nothing to celebrate.

For them it was the anniversary of
an invasion.

To mark the occasion,

43 aboriginal artists from Arnhem
Land made their own memorial.

It is one of the masterpieces of
modern Australian art.

The aboriginal memorial consists of
200 hollow log coffins,

each marking a year of European
settlement.

They are monuments to the hundreds
of thousands

of aboriginal people who have died
since 1788.

And a guarantee that the dead they
honour will rest in peace.

Amid this forest of souls it's hard
not to reflect on the destructive

impact of European settlement in
Australia, but it is nevertheless an

uplifting work of art, because it's
proof that aboriginal culture,

the oldest continuous artistic
tradition anywhere in the world,

is still with us.

In the 250 years since Captain Cook
arrived at Botany Bay,

aboriginal people have endured
unimaginable suffering,

and many of them still lead
dislocated lives,

but in the last few decades it is
art more than anything else that has

given them hope. It has become a
source of income and self-respect,

and helped them mark their place in
their own country.

Australia might long have been
colonised,

but aboriginal people are now

reclaiming it with creativity.

In the next episode, we travel into

the heart of the Pacific to explore
the

art and people of Polynesia, a place
the Europeans saw as paradise,

and then set about destroying.