'Dugong story' by Ray Rokeby
View this record on the National Museum of Australia's website
Sign in to save favourites.
- Type
- Linocuts
- Place
- Lockhart River, Queensland, Australia
- Materials
- Ink, Paper
- Collection
- Lockhart River State School collection
- Accession number
- 2010.0003.0009
Description
A linocut print in black ink on white paper depicting a dugong at the centre of the image, with a boat above, and the Aboriginal flag below the dugong. Handwritten text in pencil below the print reads 'Dugong Story Ray Rokeby' and the words Dugong Story are underlined. The linocut is mounted under black matt-board.
"When we went hunting and we stopped to drink coconut juice and we saw something black ... and was coming towards the boat. And we run with the gun ... and we ran down to the shore and my dad shot ... my dad name Frank ... he shot it ... he shot him in the head. And when we swent down to the shore ... we stood there and we saw an enormous grey dugong." - Ray Rokeby, 2002
About the collection
The Lockhart River State School Collection contains 67 prints made by children in years four to seven in 2002. The 51 lino prints and 16 monoprints capture a sense of life in Lockhart River from the children's perspective, particularly the beach and its importance to fishing and hunting. Some subjects are familiar to children around Australia, such as pets, ice-cream, sporting teams and holidays. Others are more specific to Lockhart River. The fauna of the area receives particular attention, with cassowaries, kangaroos, dugongs, black cockatoos, crocodiles, ants, snake eggs, turtles, eels and jellyfish all appearing. The prints were made as a part of the collaboration between the school and the Lockhart River Arts and Cultural Centre. The children took art classes at the Centre and worked with members of the Lockhart River Art Gang. The Cultural Centre was established in order to revitalise the communication of traditional Aboriginal culture of the region and create vocational opportunities for young people. The members of the Art Gang were the first generation of successful artists to emerge from Lockhart River, in the late 1990s, and the project with the school was an opportunity to introduce the next generation to their work and the potential of art as a vocation.
Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 6:06:45 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-02-26. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.