For decades, bark paintings, traditional tools and boomerangs have been hidden away in the dark, thousands of kilometres from ancestral country.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains an image of people who have died.
Untouched and completely forgotten about, it took 50 years for staff in Victoria’s Baw Baw Shire to discover the items in storage.
“Our council found 37 articles in storage here in [the town of] Warragul and we had to try and figure out what they were doing in our collection,” Baw Baw Shire Mayor Danny Goss said.
Gifted by the Lardil people of Mornington Island in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria, the items are now set to make the 3,000-kilometre journey home.
