Indigenous Australia 87 watercolors from Central Australia in the 1940s and 1950s were one of the fi rst forms of Aboriginal art to become well known outside of Australia. Issues of frontier violence are not avoided in the exhibition. A shield from the Rockingham Bay region of North Queensland made from the buttress roots of a fi g tree, which was collected by sugar planter and miller J. E. Davidson in the 1860s, is included. Davidson would accompany native police and others on shooting parties to kill Aborigines and he would collect artifacts from these expeditions (fi g. 9). Australia was not an isolated continent and trade occurred not only across the continent but also through Torres Strait to Papua New Guinea and with Makassan traders from Indonesia, who would visit regularly to collect trepang, or bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber). The earliest known ceremonial spears from Arnhem Land were collected by the Norwegian naturalist Carl Bock in the port of Makassar, Sulawesi, in 1878 and given to the British Museum in the following year (fi gs. 9 and 10). Pearl shell ornaments from the northwest Kimberley coast (fi g. 8) were traded across the continent, changing form and meaning as they moved from their source. The exhibition also refl ects on some of the ways the items ended up in Britain and the meaning of these objects for indigenous Australians today. A number of works by indigenous artists such as Judy Watson (fi g.
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